


Memory is a Delicate Light in the Prism of Truth and Time

by viraseii



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Arguing, False Identity, False Memories, Fighting, Holding Grudges, Injury, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Miscommunication, Slow Build, this is gonna pretty sad I think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-09-15 01:26:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9213215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viraseii/pseuds/viraseii
Summary: "Shiro, don't do this.""Shiro doesn't have a choice.""Pidge, you're a traitor.""What's so wrong with Lance's beach??""I'm sorry, Keith.""Shiro.""Shiro, don't.""Shiro!"After team Voltron takes back the universe, it's hard to return to life in the real world.Or, it's the easiest thing in the world, if you just don't remember.





	1. Speculations

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like the title is too long but what the heck ever
> 
> kind of an AU, I guess. I started writing this before season 2 came out and I'm not willing to change it, but I'm going to be taking some scenes/elements from season 2 and fitting them into my plans. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> The names switch back pretty quick but they're there for a reason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably mostly just set up for the plot, and me getting the feel of their characters before we get really deep into the Klangst^TM lmao

Jake's eyes snapped open in a panic. It was that dream again. The one that always left him feeling desperate with anguish, awash with dread and horror and tinged faintly with fear. Too many negative emotions at once. The four names were burned permanently into his mind since the first time he'd experienced this dream; the same one, every time. Those same five voices. Shiro, Pidge, Lance, Keith - he always had the nagging feeling that there was one more he was missing, one more that was important to him just as much as the rest were.

And of those four, one stood out to him: Keith. Keith. It felt familiar, the feeling of it rolling off his tongue, almost like it was meant for him, like a family heirloom or a long lost childhood treasure. Maybe the name of a family member - only Jake didn't know anyone named Keith.

Or Shiro, or Pidge, or Lance.

It was frustrating. He smacked his hand against his face, yawning as he pushed his hair back from his forehead before bringing both hands up to rub at his eyes. He was up early - but he knew there would be no going back to sleep. There never was after this dream. He pulled himself out of bed instead, lazily selecting a red shirt and black jeans from his closet so he could get dressed and head downstairs for breakfast. He took a few seconds to stare blankly at the safe behind the few clothes hanging in his otherwise empty closet. He'd lost the passcode years ago, long enough to have forgotten what he'd put inside it in the first place.

There was more than one code, too; he'd figured out the first one. The first time he'd had the dream, things had felt so strange and surreal in the real world and so concrete in his subconscious, and at some point out of frustration he'd started putting in whatever popped up in his mind. He'd tried Shiro, Pidge, Lance, and Keith - there'd been a beep at the last one. Except then it had asked for another one, and Jake tried all the names again to no avail.

But he knew one passcode, now, and he also knew that somehow Keith was more important than the others. He only wished there would be more to the maddening puzzle than the one recurring dream.

* * *

"Jake, will you just chill out for a second? Jeez. This is a _team project_. Did you not get the memo?" Cris drawled in his ear before sliding both test tubes out of Jake's hands and setting them back on the rack.

"Any team with you on it is automatically doomed to total failure," Jake stated, adjusting his goggles. "I'm just keeping the harbinger of disaster away from our graded science experiment."

"You're just doing everything by yourself," Chase muttered. "Except recording data, which I'm doing, but everything else you're doing."

"I'm helping wash stuff out," Linden offered.

"See, Cris, you can help him with that if you'd like," Jake said amiably, reaching back to grab the test tubes again.

"No way, Mullet, I want to actually do the lab. I could do it better than you, probably. Last time you wrecked the countertop." He gestured to their previous lab station, still covered with tarp where they'd burned up the counter. Then he picked up the second test tube and grabbed for the first one in Jake's hands.

"That was one hundred percent your fault," Jake scowled, tightening his grip on the glass and wrapping his fingers around the one Cris already had as well. Cris's hands were always ridiculously cold. He didn't know why they were like that, but it pissed him off anyway. Everything about Cris pissed him off.

"Guys, maybe you shouldn't pull on the test tubes like that," Linden suggested nervously as they struggled.

"We're still on lab probation from the bunsen burner trick you two pulled last time," Chase reminded them. "I hope you remember that."

"Well, we wouldn't be on probation if this guy knew how to work with his team," Cris hissed, pulling harder on the test tubes. The liquid inside sloshed around.

"I don't want to have to do all our labs through simulators for the rest of the year," Chase complained.

"Maybe you should calm-" Linden's words were interrupted by a shattering as Jake's and Cris's increasingly violent movements knocked the test tube rack off the table, spilling glass and chemicals on the floor.

"Keith!"

"Lance!"

Cris and Jake both looked up in shock. Jake had blurted it out by accident. It'd slipped out of his mouth. But Cris? Why had he called him Keith? For that matter, why had Jake called Cris Lance? Something in his brain felt urgent, like when he was close to solving a math problem where the answer kept eluding him, straining against a boundary he didn't understand how to take down.

"What did you just say?" he breathed, managing to get out just that much before the teacher was on them, scowling and yelling at them for lab misconduct. Cris frowned at him once before lowering his gaze as the classmates at the stations around them all looked up.

"Enough," their teacher said decisively. "You've lost your privilege to perform labs in my class. Next Monday I want a research paper on enzyme growth, four to six sources, typed and double spaced."

Chase was giving Jake an exasperated, half-lidded look, like, _wow, thanks._

* * *

As soon as they were outside during lunch, Jake grabbed Cris's shirt and pulled him forward. "What did you call me this morning?"

Cris looked unaffected. "I don't know. Mullet? Keith? Jake? Idiot? They're all kind of synonyms."

"Why Keith? Where did you hear that name?"

"It kind of slipped out. I don't know anyone named Keith, but if I did, he'd probably be just as obnoxious as you," Cris grinned.

Jake pushed Cris away from him. "I hate you," he sneered, rolling his eyes. This didn't solve his problem. The name Keith and its possible connection to himself was something he was keeping secret, and of all people, _Cris_ seemed to be be part of it. The only reason for Cris to know anything about it would be if Cris had somehow had the same dream, which he was pretty sure was impossible. Maybe they were characters out of a movie he'd seen when he was little, one that had affected him a lot or something.

"Yeah, so, I hope this isn't weird or anything," Linden began as the four of them walked to the ball cart. "But do the names Lance and Keith sound familiar to you? Maybe, by any chance, from a dream, I don't know? Ha ha, how crazy would that be, right? But still."

Jake looked him in the eye, eyebrows raised and drawn together. "I- Yes," he said, slowly. He looked at Chase, the only one so far out of their group who didn't seem to have any kind of link to what they were talking about. But then Linden knew, and he knew from a dream, meaning he had the same dream Jake had.

_how was it possible???_

"Wait, what? Really?" Linden looked a little surprised and wary.

"I had a dream too once," Chase muttered. Oh, of course she did. "I didn't expect anyone else to have dreamed something like it too. Shared dreams don't sound like a very common phenomenon." Jake wracked his mind. Ignoring the sarcasm? He'd just found out he'd shared the same dream with three other people.

"What about the names Shiro and Pidge? Are they familiar to any of you?" Keith asked cautiously, looking from person to person. Linden picked up a ball and bounced it against the ground a few times to test it out before throwing it at the wall.

"Yeah, actually," Chase muttered in response as Cris whooped and hit the ball hard. It flew high off the wall. "Also Hunk."

Keith frowned, shooting a look at Cris before hitting it even harder. The resultant rainbow arc let Chase tap it mildly with one hand, forcing Linden to dive for it next. Hunk. The syllable felt right. But why did Chase know a name Jake didn't?

"I've even tried looking into it a little bit? Shiro is the man who went missing from the Kerberos mission my dad and brother went on a few years ago. They told me he reappeared a couple years ago on Earth briefly before he escaped - he was never heard from again."

"Wow," Cris commented. "You never told us any of this??" he hit the ball lightly so it bounced near the wall again.

"Why would I randomly show up to school and tell you about an old mission my family was on?"

Jake grit his teeth and returned the ball, trying his hardest to get Cris out. He really didn't understand what to make of the situation. The ball hit Linden instead, and he raised his hand sheepishly in apology. Their four player wall-ball was down to three.

"I still think it's important that we figure out why these people are so familiar to us," Linden pushed, walking to the sidelines.

Jake grunted as he launched himself forward to return the ball on time again. "We need to find out more. Chase, where did you hear the name Hunk?"

Chase hesitated, stepping away from the ball and forcing Cris to take it. "This dream, I get it every so often. It's recurrent. All I can remember are voices, unaccompanied by any people or surroundings that I can see. It starts out with, 'sorry, Hunk.' Then someone else saying, 'ready, Pidge?' The first person answers with, 'do you think Keith, Hunk, and Lance will be all right if we ever return?'" Chase swore and nearly missed the wall with the next hit. "The second person says he hopes so, and the first person says, 'yeah.' Then there's more discussion, and then there's some stuff about not remembering things. That's the gist of it."

Jake fumbled with the ball, hitting it so hard it nearly touched the painted bricks before the ground. "That's different from mine," he frowned, dodging the ball as Cris flung it at him. "Out!" he shouted, hoping to get him off the court.

"Nah, in," Linden called and Cris smirked at Jake in response.

"That's different from mine, too, I think we should write them all down. Plus, you're O-U-T, Keith," Cris sang, entwining his fingers together and stretching his wrists.

A shiver ran down Jake's spine and he grit his teeth. "Why do you keep calling me that??"

"I don't know! It slipped out!"

"Again?"

"Yes!"

* * *

They sat in the library around a table, leaning their heads into the center and scrutinizing the scrawl in front of them.

__

_1- "Shiro, don't do this."_  
_2- "Shiro doesn't have a choice."_  
_3- "Pidge, you're a traitor."_  
_4- "What's so wrong with Lance's beach??"_  
_5- "I'm sorry, Keith."_  
_1- "Shiro."_  
_1- "Shiro, don't."_  
_1- "Shiro!"_

 _Idk- A sigh._  
_1- "Keith?"_  
_2- "Lance, your turn."_  
_3- "I don't want to do this."_  
_1- "I know, but we have to. It's not even permanent."_  
_4- "Are you sure? Cause, replacing memories sounds pretty permanent to me."_  
_3- "Pidge, I thought we were a team! Hunk, Keith and I all agreed against this. What, our opinion counts for nothing?"_  
_1- "I'm sorry Lance."_  
_Everyone?- A pause._  
_3- "Fine."_

 _1- "You're up, Hunk. See you on the other side of this."_  
_2- "Yeah, but there's no point, because it's not like I'll recognize you on the other side or anything."_  
_1- "How many times do I have to explain this? First Keith, then Lance, do you need me to repeat it too?"_  
_2- "I'm just saying, Pidge, that I don't agree with this."_  
_3- "Are you ready?"_  
_2- "No."_  
_3- "It's time."_

 _1- "Sorry, Hunk."_  
_2- "Ready, Pidge?"_  
_1- "Do you think Keith, Hunk, and Lance will be all right if we ever return?"_  
_2- "I don't know, but I hope they'll mature and understand in time."_  
_1- "Yeah." A pause. "My turn, I guess."_  
_2- "You're making the right decision. They'll learn to understand and appreciate that in time."_  
_1- "It doesn't feel like it right now."_  
_2- "Being in any position of leadership is no picnic. You made a decision for the three of them. They're not going to appreciate that. We know Keith and Lance already have a penchant for disobeying orders."_  
_1- "I'm just trying to do what's right. I think they're under the impression I've reverted back to how I was back when I almost left Voltron. And I didn't even leave, not like Keith did."_  
_2- "You can't change how they feel. We're never going to stop being a team. Just remember that."_  
_1- "I would say yes, except I guess I won't be remembering it."_  
_2- "Yeah, I guess you're right. Ready?"_  
_1- "Yeah."_

"This is all so depressing-sounding," Cris commented, letting his head fall back, cradled in his hands. Jake leaned forward, trying to match names to dialogue. They were currently in the order of his, Cris's, Linden's, and Chase's, based on how many people they heard talking.

"I'm just gonna throw this out there," Chase muttered. "I think these dreams are resurfacing memories. For all of us to have had similar dreams, it means that this was some event that was important to us, and it happened when the five of us were all together."

Keith furrowed a brow as Chase's words registered in his mind. "If we assume I'm Keith," he mumbled, "then I'm guessing it's safe to assume everyone else here has a name to match."

"Lance. My name is Lance," Cris sighed.

"What? How do you know?" Linden asked.

"I remembered it in bio earlier today," he shrugged.

"And you didn't tell us because?"

"Oh, zip it, Keith," Cris said sharply, raising an eyebrow and opening one eye to look at Jake. A little uncalled for, in his opinion. "Yeah, no need to assume, that's your name. From what I gather from Pidge's memories, though, you left this Voltron organization, or whatever it is."

Jake stared at him incredulously. Even if any of this meant anything - Cris was going to blame him for something he didn't even remember doing?

"And," he muttered, leaning forward again. "You're Hunk, and you're Pidge. Be happy."

Chase frowned. "Alright, that's cool, I guess. What else do you remember?"

Lance's face turned down at the edges as if thinking of something bitter, flicking an eye toward Keith for some reason. "Nothing."

"This is crazy weird," Hunk piped up. "But like, I've already gotten used to thinking of you all with your new names. Or, old names? New old names that we figured out again after taking old new names for some reason. Whatever, it doesn't matter - what I'm saying is, like, it just feels right, you know? As if I've always known you guys by these names. Although, given the circumstances, I think it's probably likely that Hunk and Lance are all pretend names we made for each other at some point, but it... doesn't feel like that." Lance nodded in agreement.

Chase pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose before turning back to the paper. "Makes sense, though. I get it now, I think."

"Yeah?" Keith prompted.

"I read something about this a while ago during our individual study assessments a couple months ago. There's this theory that memories can be intentionally repressed by an outside force. It was a big study conducted for research that could help amnesiac patients. This scientist also proposed that by using the same brain mechanics that allow us to dream, people could invent new lives for themselves. It ties a little bit into schizophrenia and different manifestations of the mental disorder."

"English, Chase," Lance sighed. Pidge huffed, shooting him a poisonous look and tossing some hair over her shoulder.

"Probably some stuff about our lives we remember is false," she quipped. "I don't know how long, maybe months or weeks. Maybe years. This conversation in front of us is something important to us that we heard before our memories were altered, which I'm guessing they were, based off of the dialogue you guys remember. It's kind of odd that it was the same conversation for all of us, though."

A shiver ran down Keith's spine. It actually all fit. It all made sense. The fact that it wasn't freaking him out or anything was what cemented it even more - he didn't have any incredulous inner dialogue trying to deny what was happening. Well, sure, he was thinking about it, he was at least somewhat skeptical. But he expected that suddenly being told that his memories were wrong would have drawn a bigger reaction from him. And yet, none of the others seemed to be freaking out much, either. He himself felt calm despite the wild notions Chase was suggesting.

"So apparently something, some event, or someone altered our memories," Keith summed up, tapping the sheet of paper. "The only other person I see here is Shiro. Maybe he helped with it. I guess it's not impossible that he gave us new names as well to give us a different identity."

"Why'd we arrange them in order of how many people were talking?" Cris mumbled.

"Because when you read Keith's," Linden answered, "it sounds like he's trying to stop something from happening. And then it's like Shiro did whatever it was anyway, and then the next one starts out with someone calling out Keith's name. And then it says your turn, Lance. So whatever Shiro did stopped Keith from speaking after that, so it makes sense that if there's only one segment with five people participating in it, and if that's the one that seems to be Keith's 'turn,' then it should go first."

Keith shifted in his seat. The words on the page made him feel uncomfortable. Every time he dreamed this dream, he felt afraid, panicky, angry. He'd never tried to study it in more detail, other than just thinking about it. Making the words visible on paper, making them tangible, telling him it wasn't just a dream and in fact a memory, was telling him that he hadn't been able to stop whatever had been causing him distress. And that just... he didn't know how to describe how he felt. It made him uncomfortable.

"It's just English, Lance," Chase said playfully.

"Hey, _Inglés no está mi idioma primera._ We still don't know whether Keith talked in anyone else's dream, because for all we know voice 3 in mine could be voice 1 in Pidge's." Cris frowned and looked up.

"I think it sounds right how it is," Jake said, glancing at the clock. They had an hour for lunch break. Fifteen minutes were gone, and he needed at least thirty if he was going to get back to school in time after dropping by his house. An idea was forming in his mind.

"Maybe this was a conversation we were having right before they changed our memories," Chase speculated. Despite all the guesswork they were doing, every conclusion they drew sounded more and more like an uncovered truth rather than a theory. "If that were the case, then every time a dream ends might indicate every time we stopped being able to participate in the conversation. That would explain why we all seemed to find this specific memory so important, and why the number of voices keeps dropping. To alter the memories, they must have had to put us to sleep."

"Why are we calling you a traitor, Pidge?" Hunk asked, reading through the paper again. "Did you help with this?"

"Well," Keith cut in. "If you read the last part, apparently she made a decision for us that we just didn't understand. That's probably the explanation."

"I don't know, genius always goes under-appreciated," Chase grinned. "I'm not worried though. This thing says that they're - that we're gonna come back to wherever this happened. We just need to remember, so we know where to go."

"Okay. So how do we remember?" Hunk asked.

"Well, I think we should find out something about Shiro. I actually know a thing or two about him. My dad and brother are pilots, and they were on the same crew as him on the first Kerberos moon mission. You know about that already. He never returned, dad and Matt say he went missing pretty much mid-conversation. So. We'll start there. I don't know if we'll find much useful information on the internet, but some thorough searching might lead us to some database containing their mission logs or something else I could hack into," Chase said, getting up to check out a laptop.

"I didn't even completely understand what you just said. Just don't hack into the audio system to rick-roll the entire school again. That gave me nightmares," Lance sighed. "I hate how Pidge is so much younger than us, and who do we always ask for help with everything? Yeah. That's right."

"That's because you lower the IQ of our entire generation," Keith muttered, his mind dwelling on the safe in his closet rather than on the conversation at hand. Lance glared at him but didn't say anything, which was rather uncharacteristic.

"Hey, wait, Chase," Keith called, turning in his seat. "How long ago did you say the Kerberos mission was?"

She looked back at him and reached up to tuck some hair behind her ear. "About two years. Why?"

"Because that's when these memories are from," Hunk nodded, understanding what Keith was getting at. "So this conversation is from two years ago, before Shiro disappeared. Or it's from a year later when he reappeared on Earth, you said that that happened, right?"

"Yeah," Pidge said. "Dad told me about it. Apparently someone broke into the galaxy garrison and took him that same night."

"So we have two years of false memories," Keith said firmly. "Or, some portion of time that we have been remembering wrong for the last two years."

"That's a long time," Lance commented. They all quieted for a moment as Chase - Pidge continued to the laptop cart. "Actually, on second thought," Lance said, drooping forward over the table. "There's probably a ton of stuff I remember wrong from two years ago. Just, I guess, for something so big that it had to be wiped from our memories, it's a long time."

"So, I have a safe in my closet," Keith announced, changing the topic. "The password is my name. Or, one of them is - as in, Keith, not Jake." 'Jake' was suddenly feeling so weird on his tongue. "I think, since we have forty minutes left for lunch, I'm gonna go check it out and see if it can tell me anything now that I've remembered more."

He stood up and strode out of the library as Hunk waved bye and Lance still sat in an odd state of silence. "That was kind of abrupt," Hunk commented, but Keith didn't respond.

* * *

Keith shoved open the closet and immediately bent forward, entering his name into the safe. The screen blinked once and went blank, waiting. Keith wracked his brain. Hunk? No, there was no reason for Keith to pick him above any of the others. What was something important to him? He furrowed his brow, frowning at the keys. It would time out if he didn't enter something soon. He took a deep breath and typed in Voltron. _8658766._

The safe clicked open. Keith let out the air he'd been holding in and pulled it open wider, leaning down to reach inside the darkness. He hadn't turned the light on in his room. His hand met two separate objects, and he pulled them both out, smiling a little at his accomplishment.

One was a knife, the handle bound in cloth and the blade beautifully made yet threateningly sharp. He felt a strange pill to it, the need to keep it with him at all times. The other was a heavy red and white handle that fit snugly into his palm. He tucked the knife into his boot so no one would see it and turned back to his door.

His younger sister was also home when he got downstairs. She looked up at him suddenly with wide eyes from the sofa, soft blond hair spilling in all directions. "Jake?" she gasped out. Her sweater was sliding off one shoulder.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Reine?"

"I didn't see your car outside," she said. Something about her voice seemed off: nonchalant, but falsely so.

"It's around the curve," he said suspiciously. "What are you doing here? You're fourteen, you can't legally drive yet."

"I, uh, didn't feel well," she smiled. "So I came home." It explained why she was sprawled on the sofa, at least. He studied her a bit more. Her face was flushed.

"That still doesn't really tell me how you got here," he muttered, shoving the red handle into his bag and stepping into the kitchen. "Did you call mom?"

"No," she said. "I'm fine, you can leave now. I'll let her know."

"Okay," he said, pouring a glass. "Bye. Have some water before I go." He stepped forward, and her grey-green eyes widened as he approached the sofa. He figured out why before she could say anything. Another figure was flattening himself against the back of the sofa, dark hair and pale green eyes and a worried smile on his face. Keith stared at him, recognizing the face from their soccer team _and_ his English class.

"Hey-ey, Jake, easy man," he laughed nervously, raising his arms. "We weren't gonna do anything."

"Don't touch my sister, Hudson," Keith said in a sharp voice, promptly overturning the glass on his classmate's face. Hudson sputtered, scrunching his eyes shut and curling in on himself in an effort to avoid the liquid. "She's three years younger than you. Reine, I'm driving you back, let's go."

Reine flushed a bright crimson and bowed her head, scrambling away from the sofa and following Keith to his car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> COMMENTS ARE APPRECIATED FAM  
> And kudos :)  
> this is my first voltron fic so I'm super anxious about it


	2. Returns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I reworked the first chapter, so if you're reading this as an update, you should go back and read the first chapter again

"I lied," was the first thing Lance said when he saw Keith walk into English. "I said I remembered in Bio but that's not exactly true. If I'm being honest, I've been slipping up and calling you guys by your other names for months now. Today was just the first time you'd noticed and I wasn't expecting that."

Keith set his bag down and hopped onto his desk, sitting on the work surface. There were only a few students in the classroom so far. He raised an eyebrow. "I'm positive I would have noticed if you'd called me Keith earlier."

"Well, guess what, I've called you Keith earlier," he pouted, crossing his arms. "I didn't actually remember, though. I still haven't. I just _know,_ somehow, that those are your - that these are our names."

"Okay," Keith mumbled, reaching down to his bag. "For now, I think you can forget that they are, though, because we're at school where you're still known as Cris the Class Fool."

"Rude," Lance commented, narrowing his eyes at the handle as Keith pulled it out to examine better. "Where did you get that?" he immediately asked.

"It was in my house," Keith muttered, turning the handle over and over in his hands, pressing his fingertips up against every ridge.

"Let me see it."

"No."

"Please? It's important."

"Do you not understand the meaning of the word no?"

"Keith, let me see it."

Keith raised his arm to block Lance's outstretched fingers. As soon as he assumed the defensive position, the handle in his hand grew warm. He pushed his arm out just as a bright red glare shot from the end of it, starting to dip as it grew in weight.

"Oof," he grunted, struggling to balance the handle's new weight as the blinding light faded. As his eyes adjusted, he gaped at the massive red and white sword in his grasp. The class fell silent, the few students trickling in from the door stopping in their tracks. One very shocked and dripping wet Hudson's face was losing color. He probably thought Keith had it in for him, which he did, but Hudson was the least of his concerns at the moment. Keith slid off the table to his feet and looked up at his classmates, his eyes wide, trying to figure out what to say. As soon as he opened his mouth, about to spill whatever rolled off his tongue in the moment, a roar split through the air, vibrating around the classroom and forcing some students to clap their hands to their ears.

Lance looked up at the ceiling wildly. "Wait, that sounds weirdly _familiar,_ " he muttered as the intercom played its opening bell, grabbing Keith's arm and dragging him to the door. Their classmates backed away from Keith's sword as he raised it.

"Attention, staff and students, we are in a lock-in. Repeat, we are in a lock-in."

Something was outside. And whatever it was, it was... _pulling_ him.

"We should probably leave," he muttered, taking a second to ignore his panic and confusion to smirk at Hudson, who looked like he honestly regretted making a move on Reine. That solved at least one problem for Keith. "I don't think we can continue English after this."

"Yeah, that's what I'm doing, smart one," Lance hissed, rolling his eyes. They pushed past the people in the door and began running down the hallway. Keith's sword flashed again, shrinking back into the small handle and lessening Keith's fear that he would accidentally slice someone's calves in half. He picked up the pace, shoving his way through grumbling high schoolers.

"Wait wait wait wait," Lance stuttered out, slowing down and blindly grabbing at Keith's shirt to stop him. "This is Pidge's classroom. We need to get her." He threw open the door. "Chase!"

Pidge sat in the front of the class. She looked up from her textbook, an eyebrow raised. "What-"

"No time to explain," Keith gasped out as Lance bounded into the classroom and grabbed her arm.

"We're leaving," Lance explained hurriedly, dragging Pidge behind him as she yelped in surprise.

"Okay?"

"Where's Hunk?" Keith demanded.

"He's probably headed to history," Lance shouted. "That's at the opposite end of the school."

"No, he's right here," Hunk said behind them, and Lance turned around.

"Oh, hey. How'd you find us?"

"Hunk's in my math class," Pidge sighed, shaking her arm from Lance's fingers. "Why are we running?"

"Keith has a giant red sword," Lance explains.

"And a knife," Keith corrects, and Lance shoots him a look. Okay, that detail probably didn't help their situation.

"Pidge, did you seriously not hear that roar just now?" Hunk deadpanned. "I was kind of ready to bolt, too, giant red sword wielding allegations against me or not."

"No! I was doing math. Wait. Where are we leaving to? I left my-"

Another roar shook the building, this time a lot louder than the last, and Keith hunched his shoulders up to his ears as he pumped his legs faster. Whatever was making this sound, he was feeling a desperate need to go toward it. He couldn't understand why, but there was a pull between him and the source that he didn't know how to describe.

The five-minute bell bubbled out of the speakers. Students grumbled as the four of them hurtled down the hallway, pushing and shoving to get to the door. Keith could feel that whatever they were racing toward was anxious for them to arrive. The source of the noise was yearning for the five of them. The intercom played its opening notes again.

"Attention, staff and students. We are in lockdown. I repeat, we are in lockdown." That would be his fault.

"Oh, Keith," Hunk stressed from behind him, breathing hard. Keith burst out into the main hall and rushed past the teachers corralling students into their classrooms. He went straight to the doors, throwing them open and gasping as he craned his neck up and up, squinting in the light of the sun as it exploded off the shining red surface of a giant metal lion. The eyes beamed down at him, and a deep rumbling rolled off of the lion's body. Keith felt himself smile a little as he stepped outside, followed by inexplicable happiness rising in his throat at the magnificent sight.

"Young man," a voice called from the doors. Keith turned to see the principle walking toward them, a walkie-talkie in one hand and a phone in the other.

"Go," Pidge said anxiously as the lion bent down and stretched open its maw. A ramp came down and they scrambled up, Keith's intuition taking over as he led them up to the pilot's seat. He threw himself into the chair and started maneuvering through controls on a whim, pulling joysticks and pressing foot pedals like it was second nature. And, in some way, it felt like it was. Just as long as he didn't try to think too much about what exactly he was doing.

The lion rose back and stood, causing the principal in the parking lot below to back up several meters and yell into both his devices. Keith paused a moment. The lion was telling him something.

"Red here wants to go somewhere," Keith announced to the group.

"Well, we're pretty much expelled from the school on account of bringing weapons, so what the heck. Go wherever," Lance muttered. "Why'd you think that was a good idea, anyway?"

"I didn't know it would turn into a sword," Keith defended, scowling.

"You said you had a knife, too," Pidge pointed out.

Keith glared at his controls. He hadn't had a choice. There was no way he was going to just leave it at home. It was just... too urgent. After finally getting the safe open, he wanted to actually examine what was inside. He considered that he could have just waited until after school, but he did get to stop Hudson from messing around with his sister, so he considered it a win in his book. "Would you stop leaning on my seat?" he growled, suddenly acutely aware of the pressure against his back.

"What are you going to do about it?" Lance drawled. Keith grit his teeth. Something in his heart jumped fondly at the playful tone, so he decided to ignore everything altogether.

"Okay, let's go." He leaned his chair back forcibly against Lance and let the lion take over; they got about two seconds of quiet before the lion launched itself off the ground, hurtling into the sky faster than Keith could draw in the breath to scream.

"Oh, man," Hunk muttered almost immediately once the pull of inertia lessened. "I think I'm gonna throw up."

"Not now, buddy," Lance warned as the sky outside the windows shifted rapidly from blue to black. Keith looked around at the blurring colors wildly. Was it possible to travel this fast?? "We're in a constricted area. Please have mercy on the rest of us."

"What's that?" Keith muttered, pointing straight ahead at a glowing purple circle in the sky.

"It's a.. worm... hole," Pidge said amazedly. "Is that where we're headed?" The word clicked comfortably into Keith's mind like a missing puzzle piece.

"Yeah, a wormhole. I don't know how I know, but I swear, I know," Hunk muttered. Keith nodded. He got it.

"Looks like that is where we're headed," Lance said anxiously as they got closer and closer. They all collectively drew in their breath as they burst through the surface in a shower of light, suddenly surrounded in streaks of dark pink and flaring violet. They hurtled toward the glowing white end, yelling and clutching each other. Keith's stomach swirled, his mouth running dry as darkness started to spot his vision. He gripped his controls tighter to keep himself steady, and then... they were through.

Below them was a jaw-dropping landscape of cliffs, beaches, and bright trees, with white bark and black and turquoise leaves shaped like squares. Locked onto on the lion's screen was a large castle, well concealed in the plant life. Keith wouldn't have noticed it without the glowing arrows pointing it out.

A deep thrumming suddenly resounded in his brain, bigger than him, smarter than him, older than him. His vision dimmed for a second, and suddenly all he could see was glowing red. Words popped up in his brain.

"The Castle of Lions," Keith breathed as the presence left his mind. "This lion... ship... is like, talking to me. Did you hear that?"

No one responded. Keith glanced up, and Hunk was shaking his head, gazing in awe at the surroundings as they approached the castle.

Something in him felt immensely let down when the lion landed in front of the castle and they all stepped out. There was such a thrill about being in the lion, about flying, he... he didn't ever want to come back to the ground. He glanced up. The sky here was red. The sand was bright white but the water they'd seen from above had also been red. The dirt the trees were rooted in was black. There were bright turquoise butterflies with 3 pairs of wings that trailed behind them like ribbons in the wind, fluttering around, unafraid. It was kind of beautiful, in an alien way. He looked up at the solid red surface of the lion again. The alien butterflies were clustering around her head, and Keith felt a strange sort of blushing happiness.

Ignoring the creatures, the lion growled and roared, and Keith flinched a little. The door swung slowly open, and Lance led the way inside. They proceeded in silence through the interior of the castle, going down stairs and hallways until eventually they reached the control room. Keith kept feeling this nagging sensation, half in awe at the surroundings and half almost... homesick, in a way. Homesick _for_ the castle.

Pidge frowned once the hallway door hissed open to reveal a massive central control room. "Everything here is too familiar and too strange. All at the same time." Keith agreed. She fiddled with the controls in the center, poking at them. The castle whirred and five circles spiraled open in the ground, seats rising up through the openings adorned with colored lights. Lance strolled over to the blue one, running a hand up and down the back in curiosity. Keith turned in the opposite direction as a hissing sounded behind him, like steam. Rising out of the ground near them were three glazed over pods. As the glass surface shimmered and fell away, Keith stepped forward to catch the man inside and keep him from falling to the ground.

The man groaned and brought one arm up to his head, rubbing back and forth. He blinked slowly, getting his bearings, righting himself after a moment and looking around. Keith glanced over to the adults who'd exited the other two pods. Both of them were frowning, glances flying from person to person. The room was quiet for a moment.

"How long has it been?" The one girl among them asked, moving away from Pidge, who'd been holding her up, and toward the central control panel. Keith took a moment to ascertain she was real - her looks were bewitching. She placed her palms over the controls and holograms popped up, foreign letters Keith couldn't read flying around. "About a year? That's not so bad. This is about as long as I expected Haggar to stay away for. How did she find you? How did you escape?"

"Who?" Hunk asked, completely bewildered like the rest of them, and she turned around to look at him.

"Haggar," the man near Keith said. "Is she close? How much time to we have?" Keith squinted his eyes a little, trying to place his voice. He swore he knew this man.

"We have no idea what you're talking about," Pidge said slowly.

"Oh, not to worry, my guess is your heads are all still in a flurry," the third man said dismissively, running a hand through his orange hair and stretching his legs. "How'd you get here without remembering everything?"

"A giant red lion flew us here," Lance supplied.

"The red lion? It found you over a distance as vast as that? That's astonishing, even for you." Keith raised his eyebrows. The girl was addressing him. What was he supposed to say?

"I guess?" he tried.

"Keith," the man next to him said. "Do you remember us? All of this?" The dream. This voice was in his dream.

"Vaguely," he muttered. "You're Shiro, I think."

Shiro's mouth parted a little, his eyebrows drawing up in worry. "You're back early," he said quietly.

"So Haggar hasn't found us yet," the girl said. "If you're back early, though... then that means that she can't be far off from locating our position. We must be prepared for her arrival." Keith stared at her. She seemed so focused, so in motion, so in charge. It threw him off. He didn't even understand why the lion had brought them here yet.

"Someone want to explain to me what's going on?" Lance muttered, his eyebrows furrowed. The thought struck Keith suddenly - he looked kind of cute with his face scrunched up in confusion like that. Keith frowned and averted his eyes.

"You'll understand everything once your memories are restored," the girl said distractedly, fiddling with some controls. So it was confirmed - their memories were definitely false, and these three had something to do with it. A lot to do with it. "Coran, Shiro, get them to the cryo-pods and set them to restore their memories. I'll see about making sure we aren't being tracked by Haggar."

"Princess," the orange haired man said. "You just woke. You should eat something before jumping into all this."

"I'm not hungry," she said, shaking her head. "Making sure we're safe is the first priority. The faster they start to remember, the faster we have to be able to get moving."

"Wait," Shiro said. "Maybe if Haggar hasn't found us yet, it would be better to just send them back. The three of us can get back in the pods."

"Wait, no," Pidge spoke up urgently. Her eyes were wide. "I want to know what's going on here."

Shiro looked at her, conflicted, before looking back at the princess.

"A year is long enough," she declared. "Now that they've remembered, and that the red lion has been awakened, there can be no doubt that Haggar is on the move. We have to be ready to fight."

"You heard her!" Coran smiled, slapping his palms together. "It's to the cryo-pods with you." He stepped forward.

"Whoa, wait, what are you cryo-freezing?" Hunk asked apprehensively, his hands flying up in front of him. Lance moved away from the chair to come stand next to Hunk with his hands in his pockets.

"Your memories are stored down below," Shiro explained. "In the cryo-pods, we can restore them to you."

"Why do you have them?" Lance raised an eyebrow.

"You'll understand once you have them back. There's going to be a lot to explain otherwise, so you'll just need to have a little patience." Shiro stared ahead, frowning a little in guilt or concentration. Something like that. Keith wondered why he wore the expression he did, but he was wary of the man from the dreams.

They followed Shiro and Coran out of the room, exchanging glances between each other. Keith looked carefully back at Lance again. Cute? Why had that word popped up into his mind. What did it mean. Lance's eyes flicked to Keith for a moment before staring pointedly ahead, as though he were extremely concentrated. His cheeks flared a soft pink. Keith narrowed his eyes and looked harder to make sure. Lance glanced at him again, before setting his jaw forward and frowning.

Something... wasn't normal.

They reached the cryo-pods. Four of them were already open, extra containers attached to them shimmering with orbs of colored light.

"Right," Coran announced. "A few vargas in here and your heads should have all the right stuff back in them! You'll be remembering most of it through dreams and flashbacks. I can't guarantee you'll have all your memories, some of them may take longer for you to recall. You'll remember most everything, though, and over time as you get back into the rhythm of things, it'll all resurface."

Pidge poked at a pod. "So... you're saying that this will return all the information to our heads, but it'll take a while for us to consciously be able to access all of it."

"That's right," Shiro said gently. "When my memories were blurry after escaping from Zarkon's ship, I got dreams and flashbacks of my time spent as a prisoner, so I slowly pieced my past back together. It'll be something similar for you." They looked at him blankly. He sighed. "Never mind."

Coran directed Keith to the first pod. "Keith, this one's yours. It's best we get this on with. We need you all ready to form Voltron as quickly as possible! In you go." Keith frowned, running his hands along the edge, before stepping inside. He turned around, watching everyone else as the glass came down around him. His eyes danced around Lance's face again. Lance looked troubled, watching with an indescribable expression, almost like apprehension, but resigned. Coran took his arm and guided him to the next one.

Something soft and pulsing latched onto either of Keith's temples and before he had the time to panic and try to figure out what it was, he blacked out and dreamed.

* * *

_"You can't just erase our lives! You think I want to go back to living aimless and alone on Earth after everything we've accomplished?" Keith clenched his fists and fumed, speaking through gritted teeth._

_Shiro looked at him in the eyes, making that face he makes whenever he's trying to get Keith to understand something. "I'm sorry, but it really is the best way. The fact that you're a paladin will never change, Keith. There will come a time when Voltron must rise again, and if the need presents itself you four will always be called upon to help defend the universe. But all of you deserve a life separate from what's in your future if you stay here."_

_"Totally loving the deserve a life idea, really, but not so much loving the forget everything idea," Hunk added. "And - and, I think I speak for everyone when I say that, I mean, I think so? Right, Lance? Back me up."_

_Lance pushed his way forward to face Shiro, scowling. "No, Hunk's right! Don't mess with what's in my head, I don't want to forget all of this. Who cares if the old hag is still out there? We defeated the tyrants of the universe! We can take anything. Live out our lives on Earth peacefully,_ without _any kind of memory alteration, may I add, and then if the witch ever shows up we give her a piece of this." He flexed his arm and pointed to it to illustrate his words. Keith's heart ached at the sight._

_"You're not getting it, any of you," Pidge said frustratedly. "Haggar will use what's in our minds to destroy us all. The more time she spends out there, the stronger she grows, and the less chance we have of escaping her. We got lucky in the battle that she chose to flee rather than stay and fight. But especially after how much our mental reliance on Voltron has grown throughout this war, we can't risk any of those bonds being compromised." They pushed up their glasses, standing with their back straight as a beam as they calibrated the next set of sensors with Coran._

_"Pidge, you're still on his side? I can't believe you're willing to give up your entire life and trade it for a completely false identity. Why do you want something like that??" Lance looked bewildered, gesturing wildly. His back was to Keith._ And it always will be, _Keith thought absently. He reached up to fiddle with the cord of light attached to his temple. It was semi-tangible, moving under his direction, yet more as a result of his intentions to move it than as a result of his physical force._

_"In case you hadn't noticed, I never asked for any of this to happen to me, Lance!" Pidge shouted venomously, taking their hands off the console. "The only reason I joined the garrison in the first place was to find my family. And I did, and they're okay, and I want to live the life with them that I never got to before." They glared straight up at Lance._

_"Even if that life is a fake memory?" Lance demanded._

_"Memories make us who we are. How do you know the memories you have now aren't fake?" Pidge challenged, stepping closer, holding up two more cords for Lance to connect to his head._

_"It doesn't matter. I made them, I remember making them, and I want to keep them. I'm not going back to a life of aimless solitude," Keith declared, trying to step in and say his piece. He wasn't going to let this happen._

_"Yeah, Keith's a loner, it would be cruel to send him back to his friend-less fate." Lance said it passively, but there was hidden anger in his voice. He grabbed for the cords, holding them in his hand for a moment before his face drew into itself in apprehension and they fell through his hand to the floor._

_"Maybe now is not the best time to tease each other?" Hunk muttered, intervening so Keith wouldn't have to answer Lance's jibe. Keith drew his eyebrows in and stared at the floor. "I thought the point was that we don't want our memories erased."_

_"I'm sorry," Allura spoke up. "But I'm going to have to side with Shiro and Pidge. Your job as the paladins of Voltron is to protect this universe, and right now the mental connections you share are this universe's biggest threat. It's not_ really _goodbye forever, and when the need arises you'll always be called back, but it is our duty to know when we need to step away from a fight."_

_"Princess??" Lance looked stricken, and something hot burned in the pit of Keith's stomach in anticipation of what was about to fall out of Lance's mouth. "Oh my god, and I had a thing for you. Love really is cruel! I can't believe you want to give me an entire other life. I can't be that bad?"_

_Keith's frustration and jealousy boiled. "Are you serious." The sensors over his temples pulsed brighter as they picked up his emotions._

_"No time for your cynical comments now, Keith." There was no emotion behind his voice, like he was reciting the thesis of an over-rehearsed speech. Keith wasn't even worth Lance's rivalry anymore._

_He tried not to show how much it hurt when Lance brushed him off._

_"Look," Pidge started._

_"Where?" Hunk asked, sarcastic._

_"Not literally, okay?" they said in frustration, lifting sensors up to their own temples and letting them connect. "But look. This is the best option. We may have a stronger mental bond with our lions and with each other than ever before, but we're still mentally weak when it comes to Haggar's attacks. Our best chance is to delay her. Shiro."_

_Shiro stepped forward to where Hunk was standing in front of the cryo-pod, holding out his prosthetic arm._

_Hunk's eyes widened and he stood up straighter, holding up his hands in front of him. "Ahhh, no, wait, why do I have to go first? Can't Keith go first? He's braver! And what about democracy? This issue is not _resolved_ yet."_

_"It's 3 to 3, it's never going to be resolved. You'll thank this one day, really," Shiro pushed gently, withdrawing his arm to try to reason again._

_"Well, Coran hasn't said anything. You can't abstain, Coran," Lance accused, snatching up his sensors and attaching them to his temples._

_"Nope, no, leave me out of this, I'm just your mechanical support staff for now," he said, pointing Pidge toward their pod, and then Lance._

_"Mechanical tie breaker support staff!" Lance pleaded. "Come on, you're not possibly on board with this."_

_"I just listen to Princess Allura when I'm in doubt," Coran said, raising his arms. Clever way to avoid the argument._

_Pidge crossed their arms. "It's for your own good, Keith, Lance, Hunk."_

_"I'm not going to ever forgive you for this," Lance pouted, the bite fading from his voice as he leaned against the surface of his pod, next to Keith's. Shiro made eye contact with Keith and nodded in his direction. So he was going first, then. Simply because of Hunk's nerves._

_He wondered desperately what Lance would be thinking while his memories were being siphoned away._

_"Technically, none of us will remember each other, so I don't think making vows like that is going to change much," Pidge pointed out, and Lance's expression snapped in annoyance._

_"Now," Coran started. "This won't_ remove _memories from your heads. It'll simply lock them up, so that with the proper push, say, if Haggar attacks you on Earth, the lock'll open and you'll have access to everything. Your lions should wake up, then, and you'll be able to escape to planet L-47. The lions have been preprogrammed to find the place anyway, so in case your brains are all jumbled up, you'll be headed back here."_

_Keith sorely felt the aching absence of Red's thoughts melding to his own. The emptiness burned. One chain of unbroken communication, and the other half of it had been missing since yesterday when they'd all voluntarily hibernated their lions. Without the shared bond to the Voltron lions, he couldn't feel anything with the other paladins, either, and after so long of being used to thinking together, his own head felt agonizingly lonely._

_"I'm sorry, Keith," Shiro said softly but firmly, stepping forward. Keith crossed his arms, still not appreciative of what they were about to do._

_"I want an apology too," Lance demanded. "Plus, I refuse. I'm not going to do this. I'll stay with Shiro on the ship. A-And why isn't he getting his memories altered? Isn't he the biggest threat of any of us?" The cords of light connected to Lance's head were pulsating._

_"Haggar can track me through my arm no matter what," Shiro reasoned. "I don't see how abandoning the arm and my enemies both would help me in case a battle does come, so the best option is to reduce the number of targets she can aim for."_

_Pidge cut in, and Keith thought he detected something deeper in their voice. Despite the fact none of them would remember today's events, they were trying their hardest to prevent Lance from hating them. Keith understood the feeling. Getting the cold shoulder from Lance felt like the one thing he couldn't deal with. It felt like the entire universe deciding he wasn't on par with everyone else Lance held in good standings. "If anything, that should be a reassurance to you, right, Lance? There's a better chance we'll come back if Haggar does find Shiro."_

_"Pidge, I can't take anything you say as reassurance anymore," Lance said sharply. "I should have known from the first day in the simulator at the Garrison that you had it in for me." Keith's eyes widened. That seemed harsh, even given the situation._

_"This is not_ about _you."_

_"It's not about you either!"_

_"Pidge?" Hunk intervened again. "I know your family is important, but I like Lance's idea where we chill out on earth for the next few years." Lance closed his eyes and inhaled softly, his jittery sensors stilling and calming down to a steady glow._

_"I think we should go out there and track her down, fight her before she has a chance to get ready and come after us," Keith said, trying to bring his perspective back into the argument. Their best shot was to kill Haggar_ now _._

 _"Keith!" Lance exclaimed, eyes still closed. "Just, chill out for once! We saved the_ universe _. We kind of deserve a break?" The sensors jumped again, and then Keith realized why they were reacting like that. Lance was_ terrified _of losing his memory, yet also terrified of facing Haggar. He was afraid and there was no way he was ever going to admit that. Keith's chest ached. Honestly, what had happened to Lance during the war?_

_"Look, the other option would be for all of us to freeze ourselves in a sleeping pod for the next few years," Pidge offered bluntly._

_"Aw, quiznak," Lance said distastefully. "Never again. Once was enough. You come out of those things feeling like death and starvation incarnate, with way too much melatonin in your system than should ever be allowed."_

_"Alright then," Shiro said, sensing as Lance's resolve to resist finally crumbled. "Keith?" The way he said Keith's name... it made him feel so powerless._

_"Shiro, don't do this," he begged._

_"Shiro doesn't have a choice," Pidge said, their voice tired._

_"Pidge." Lance's tone was halfhearted. "You're a traitor."_

_"What's so wrong with Lance's beach??" Hunk tried again, but his inflection gave away his understanding anyway. This was, logically, the option that made the most sense._

_"I'm sorry, Keith." Again, the sound of Keith's name from Shiro's tongue. Keith didn't_ want _this. He flicked his gaze over to Lance one last time, who was gazing at the floor._

_"Shiro," he tried one last time, staring at the hand Shiro held out. Coran nodded to Shiro, fingers poised in front of the screen, ready to start building Keith a new, false life._

_"Shiro," he repeated, placing his hand in Shiro's despite his words. "Don't."_

_"Shiro!"_

_And then he was losing consciousness, trying to desperately keep his grip on his most precious memories, calling up Lance's face, Red's emotion, the satisfaction of awakening his blade, Allura's unconditional love for the five of them, the kind he'd never felt before. The day they defeated Zarkon._

_They were the first memories to go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was like 1000 words longer than the last chapter rip sorry  
> but I personally think it works out fine


	3. Fragments, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is practically writing itself. Double update today! and it's not even the 31st as i planned, wow, look at that.
> 
> maybe it's cuz ive been neglecting literally every other fic im writing right now

_Lance jumped when Keith's door opened. He looked as if he'd been walking past in the hallway, and the sudden hiss had startled him. He turned to face Keith's bleary eyes warily. Keith glanced up at him quickly, surprised; Lance had been shut up in his room all day yesterday._

_"You look fresh," Lance stated sarcastically._

_Keith stared at him for a few seconds, trying to restart his brain. Lance was making eye contact with him. It was stand off-ish, across a safe distance, but he was looking into Keith's eyes and Keith wasn't sure if he felt more happy or anguished. Kind of both._

_"I didn't sleep," he explained._

_"Yeah?" Lance said slowly. He was wearing his dumb Altean bath robe, nightgown, whatever it was. "Busy sneaking off the ship again or something?"_

_Keith winced and looked down at his hand where he was gripping the edge of his doorway. Not because it was obviously a passive aggressive statement about Keith's previous actions, but because that had been_ exactly _what he had been doing. "No," he lied, but his voice was quiet._

 _Lance blew air out his nose and turned away, and Keith suddenly regretted being the first to look away._ Come back. _"Well, news flash, it's early enough that it could be four in the morning right now. Feel more than free to get back in there and sleep, maybe lessen the chances of Allura or Coran mistaking you for an Earth raccoon." He was already walking away, so Keith just barely caught the last part._

_"Okay," he replied anyway, turning back around and yawning. He didn't even bother to check if the door was closed before flopping down onto his bed and immediately falling asleep._

* * *

_Keith sighed, leaning against Red's jaw, feeling her purring at him both out loud and in his mind. He let himself smile a little. Hunk and Pidge were saying their goodbyes, but Lance was still shut up in his room. Keith could understand. Letting go of Red was one of the hardest parts of this. He closed his eyes and went through some of his most important memories of her. The first time he saw her, glistening and proud and completely shut off to everyone around her. She was smaller than the blue lion, about the same size as the green one. And she was surrounded by her forcefield, and he was so ready to sit in that pilot's seat and wreck through the Galra ship._

_The first time she came to his rescue, piloting herself, rescuing him and the princess from empty space in between galaxies. He'd never been more shocked or happier to see the familiar edges of her shining red metal. Every time she purred at him, rumbling that resonated deep in his chest and filled him with heat and determination. The day he came back from flying solo for a while, and she'd awakened with anger and excitement in response to his return. She was an ever-present comfort in his mind, someone he knew to be there in his loneliest moments. Every time he sought solitude he knew he would never be truly an outcast because she was always part of him, in there. She was the one who would never give up on him, and he was now being forced to leave her._

_"Hey, Red," Keith said softly. "How's it going?" A wave of energetic enthusiasm rocked through him, and he laughed. "Good to be with you too." He stepped away, looking up at her. "I'm here to say goodbye," he breathed. "But I'm not going to. It'll be a while, but I'll see you soon. I'm taking a pod later tonight. We're not too far from Earth now, and we've already figured out where we're going to be staying and everything."_

_Red's excitement broke his face into a smile again. She was ever raring to go somewhere. "I'm taking my bayard and my knife with me, I'm going to hide them in the place that's going to be my new house. When I find them, I think the familiarity should jog my memory. That's where you come in." A low thrumming sound rose from under her chin. Keith put his hand up on her nose again. Her tail was swishing side to side close to the back of the hanger._

_"As soon as I activate my bayard, I need you to come get me and bring me here. You can do that, can't you, girl?" She erupted in purrs at that, as if saying_ of course _, and he grinned. "I knew I could count on you. Good kitty." He drew out the last syllables. "Now go to sleep until then," he whispered, closing his eyes and stepping away. He reached toward her from his mind, pushing her consciousness away from his, forcing her out of his thoughts._

_It was harder than he expected. She was adamant._

_After half an hour, he left the hangar, the bright yellow eyes of his lion no longer glowing. As soon as he was far enough, the glittering red forcefield shot up, Red's confirmation that she wouldn't be getting up to form Voltron any time soon._

* * *

_"Pidge," Hunk said tiredly. "Would you please stop beating around the bush?"_

_"We're going to have to erase our memories," Pidge said, laying out the truth on the table for all to see. "She's not going to attack us until she can consolidate forces a little. We'll get a break on Earth, and if she decides not to attack us, there won't be any extra mental baggage. If she does, the struggle to remember will help us improve our minds, at least to the capacity Shiro has, by putting us through a similar situation. Then we can go fight her. Everyone gets what they want."_

_"We could get the same result by playing memory match," Lance stated venomously. Pidge looked frustrated._

_"I think it's the best option. You'll get a true break this way, too," Shiro declared, and that was what hit Keith hard. He stared at Shiro in shock as Lance then proceeded to argue with Pidge, getting more and more heated. Red's excitement in response to their heightening emotions was increasing, making him feel like jumping into the heat of things._

_"I won't let you take my memories!" Lance shouted._

_"You agreed to do whatever it takes, that you won't let emotion hold you back," Pidge fired back. "Remember? We all did."_

_"I don't like it any more than you, Lance, but it's our safest option. You won't even remember all of this," Shiro reasoned._

_It was_ absolutely crazy. __

 _"You're telling me," Keith said darkly, Red's turbulent mood swirling with his indignance. "That the_ only way _is to give us temporary amnesia. The_ only way. _"_

_"It's not the only way," Shiro said. "But it's the simplest and easiest. This needs to be a kind of subconscious training. Not only that, but it will help us in our battle at the same time as it strengthens you."_

_"Or we could all work here at the castle instead, try to get to the same place with our lions that Shiro got to with his. Work with the mind helmets until we ascend to the astral plane, or... whatever," Hunk proposed._

_"I want to go to Earth!" Lance burst out emotionally, making Keith's eyes widen in surprise. Lance was never very outspoken about his internal issues. Evidently the pressure had been building up._

_"Yeah, me too," Hunk said sadly._

_"Do you even know how the brain works?" Keith tried. "Do you have any kind of solid backing to prove that_ taking our memories _is going to help us fight Haggar?"_

_"No, I don't," Pidge answered hesitantly. "But this is what Shiro went through, and we know he was more successful than I was at fighting with her. I'm not saying memory recollection necessarily adds to our mental strength, but we know that somehow Shiro came out of it more focused, and that's all we have to go off of right now."_

_"Look, whatever," Lance huffed. "Allura's injured. Let's just go see if she's okay and talk about this later. Maybe you'll come to your senses."_

* * *

_Keith gasped as he ripped his helmet off his head, bending down to grip his knees and cough for a good thirty seconds._

_"Keith, you alright?" Hunk was asking him. Both of them were out of breath._

_"Fine," he groaned, straightening, striding forward to where Pidge and Lance were waiting. "We have to go after her," he declared as he marched up to them. "We can't let her get away. This empire is so close to being overthrown. She's one person standing in our way. We just have to take her out. We're way over-prepared. We have to leave_ now. _"_

_Pidge looked ashen. "I'm not so sure about that," they said softly. "Do you know what Haggar does? Do you know how she fights?" Pidge shook their head slowly, fear sprawled across their face. "We don't stand a chance."_

_"Pidge might be right," a rough voice spoke up from behind Keith, and he turned to face Shiro, sweating and bloody. "None of you have had to fight her. She doesn't joke around. She will attack your mind and go straight for the kill."_

_"Yeah? Nothing we haven't handled before," Lance reasoned slowly. "But how much harm can she even cause right now? Tonight we_ celebrate _."_

_"We have to kill her!" Keith yelled. He felt Red's energy start to stir, connecting with his urgency. That, at least, was good news. He needed her online for one final battle._

_"No!" Pidge said violently. Then, more calm. "No. Definitely not. You can't fight her. We're more connected to our lions than ever-" Red purred in the back of Keith's mind at the acknowledgement, warmth returning to her battered body. Keith sent her a wave of reassurance. "-and that makes it easier for her to attack those bonds. We need mental armor before we can fight her."_

_"Mental armor," Lance repeated in a flat voice. "How do you want us to do that."_

_"You have to... exercise your mind," Hunk said. "Like any muscle, right?"_

_"What, like, we sit around playing sudoku?" Lance guessed._

_"No, that's not going to do anything," Keith growled. "It doesn't matter. If we hit her now and hit her hard, she'll never know we're coming. Why is this even in discussion? We're this close to freeing the universe." He thrust his pinched fingers up violently to illustrate his point. Fire burned in the pit of his stomach, the red lion on board with his plan and already raring to go. He loved her. "We can take her. Shiro fought her before too, and it wasn't so bad."_

_"It was pretty bad," Shiro corrected him. "But you're right, it was worse for Pidge."_

_Pidge flinched slightly as they recalled facing off with Haggar when she'd specifically targeted their youngest, smartest member. "How_ did _you manage to hold your own against her for as long as you did?" they asked shakily._

_"Living through being captive by the Galra for a year, and then the mental repercussions of losing your recollection of specific events have a way of strengthening one's focus," Shiro joked. "But that's absolutely not an available option for any of you." Keith looked carefully at Lance. He figured if it was holding out against the Galra that strengthened the mind, Lance probably stood the best chance at resisting Haggar's mind games. But judging from the troubled face he was turning to the floor, Lance was anything but ready to face Haggar. He took a moment to see if he could reach out through Red to Blue, and then Lance, but the Blue lion was just looking indecisive and Lance was closed off._

_"Let's just talk about this after we rest up and eat a little," Hunk suggested with a sigh. "None of us can just get up and go right now." Keith opened his mouth to object, but Hunk placed a finger on Keith's lips. "Nope. No one."_

_Keith turned frustratedly and stormed away to Red, a hurricane brewing in his head. Her eagerness to meet his temper with her own fire soothed him._

* * *

_"Before we go through with this," the princess said softly from her seat. "I want you to promise you will do anything, whatever it takes, to defeat the Galra empire. You won't let emotion hold you back. You'll follow the right course of action."_

_"Of course," Lance said, kissing her hand. Keith's stomach twisted sickeningly. She smiled back at him, almost fondly, if still exasperated. The rest of them all muttered their assent._

_"You realize what that means?" Shiro said slowly. "It means should you need to leave someone behind and save yourself, that's what you'll do. Should you need to sacrifice yourself to keep the lions away from Galran hands, that's what you'll do." Everyone lowered their gaze as these implications sunk in._

_"It could be a lot worse," Allura added on, glancing around carefully at all of their faces. "You may have to sacrifice the castle of lions. You may have to allow yourself to get captured in order to get inside. You may have to accept new paladins to replace your old teammates." Keith swore she looked directly at him when she said that. And probably for good reason, anyway. "You may be heading to your final battle, but it could last a long time. You may not be back on Earth in another few days like I fear some of you may be hoping for." That one was for Lance, Keith was sure. He looked up at the blue paladin, worried, but Lance held an unwavering smile as he agreed to Allura's words._

_"We signed up for those stakes when we accepted the fight against Zarkon," Hunk said confidently. "We'll stand by you until the end."_

_"And then some, if we need to," Pidge added with a grin._

_"I'm going down fighting, on the off chance that I go down at all," Lance laughed. Allura closed her eyes and smiled._

_"You're my family, all of you," she said quietly. "I'm glad you understand the stakes."_

* * *

Keith felt weird being back in the castle. The Lisa Maroon _, or what was left of her, had been salvaged and brought in, and was currently in the bay with the rest of the castle's aircraft. There was a tension in the air. He watched Hunk and Pidge going through and helping the prisoners for a while, asking them questions, assessing if anyone needed medical attention, searching through the crowds to see if the Holt family was among them. Shiro and Allura were talking in hushed tones at the head of the control room. Keith hesitated before drifting numbly toward them, still convincing himself that this was real, that he was back in the cool blue interior of the Castle of Lions, and that Pidge could... yeah. They both looked up at as soon as he was within earshot, conflicted expressions warring over their faces._

_Keith opened his mouth, questions bubbling up in his mind; yet most of them answered themselves anyway. Why were they acting so distant from him? Because he'd left them. What had they been doing on that Galra ship? Tracking Zarkon and freeing prisoners. If that wasn't the main fleet, and they hadn't been able to find any information from the systems, where was their next destination? No one was quite certain of the exact answer to that at the moment._

_He closed his mouth without a sound before deciding to just ask something more simple. "Where's Lance?" His voice came out unexpectedly rough._

_Allura's expression turned cold and she turned away from him, head bent and eyes falling toward the floor. Shiro pressed his lips together, looking like he was bordering between anguish and guilt, his eyes dropping as well. Small splashes of cold fear prickled against the edges of Keith's gut. He turned around, looking left and right as if Lance would be standing off to the side, as if he'd just missed him the first time around and if he looked again he'd see the blue paladin. Instead, all he saw was Hunk looking back at Shiro with some terrible tragedy in his eyes and Pidge's back steel straight, their fingers clenched._

__... No. __

_"Where is he?" Keith tried again, his voice shaking slightly, crossed between anger, grief, and disbelief._

_Their silence was confirmation enough._

* * *

_Keith took a deep breath, readying himself for this next assault. He took one look at the banged up_ Lisa Maroon _, repeating his usual speech in his head._ It'll be over soon, _he promised the small ship._ We've done this hundreds of times by now. Fourteen major fleet commanders down, and we're only getting closer and closer to finding where Zarkon's hiding out.

If this is the real deal though, if he's here, then tomorrow the universe will be free. Then I'll... then I'll find the Castle of Lions, maybe, I guess. _He looked up at the stolen ship, its metal more foreign than not after all the repairs he's had to do. Only the infrastructure and some of the hide of the original_ Lisa Maroon _survived, rich red paint visible as just a faint stain. The ship was old, compact, barely holding up against all the Galra battles he'd flown her through, and most of all: she didn't talk back to him. He remembered faintly how it used to feel when he piloted the red lion, as if he'd stepped out of his own body and become one with her. The_ Lisa Maroon _was much more ordinary and very much_ not _sentient._

_"You forsook that," he reminded himself, and something twisted inside him bitterly. It wasn't that he regretted it. He couldn't bring himself to care about the rest of his team at quite the same level he cared about Shiro, and he knew whatever was between Lance and him wasn't heading in any direction that would be beneficial to the team. It wasn't that he couldn't work through all that, but after his conversation with Allura, it was pretty much obvious what his path was. It was so much more efficient to work at his own pace, no one holding him back, no princess to safeguard and especially no other people he had to maintain a good relationship with. No more magic lions and fire powers, for sure, which really was something Keith missed a lot, but he’d been doing fine without them all his life and he’d been doing fine without them after leaving, too. Alone was how he functioned best, although he did sorely miss Red’s firepower._

_He was never really meant to be a team player._

_He turned away from his view of the Galra ship in the distance and climbed back into the_ Lisa Maroon _. The reason he'd hung on to the banged up ship was because it had one of the better cloaking mechanisms out of all the ones he'd seen around. The approach took longer than he expected - the fleet was so much bigger than he'd initially assumed and he had gauged the distance based on his last few attacks. Something tingled in his gut. Was this it? Was this the main Galra fleet? The center of command? His body thrummed with newfound drive and energy. It would be worth it. The months he'd spent drawing scraps of information from hundreds of Galra ships had finally led him here. The ships didn't seem to be on alert - it would just take him a few more minutes to sneak past them, get inside, and start picking off soldiers. He grit his teeth in determination. Tonight he would fight Zarkon and he would win. He would free the universe._

_The plan didn't go so smoothly. He was close to an open dock near the base of the main ship when he crashed, his momentum throwing him forward in his seat as the ship's orientation spiraled, setting him off course._

_The_ Lisa Maroon's _emergency warning systems sprang to life. Red lights flashed and a dull siren blared around him. Keith felt a flare of panic as the controls started to lag, his screens blinking, yet the space around him was empty. He wildly checked the cloaking functions, his first line of defense. The symbol on his dash that let him know it was working was flickering on and off irregularly, and his fears were confirmed when the ship started shuddering around him. He'd been spotted and the Galra had started targeting his ship._

 __What did I hit?? _Keith tried to aim for the dock again. Another alarm split through the air, alerting him of a disabled wing._ At least I still have it, _he thought, smirking lightly to himself as he recalled Lance telling him stories of the various ways he'd wrecked the Garrison simulator. A banged up wing was repairable. One that was missing entirely? Not so much. He clenched his fists tightly around the controls and maneuvered the creaking ship back toward the open dock, his landing rough enough to knock his power out for a split second. He decided to kill it completely, suddenly hearing nothing but his own roaring heartbeat in the darkness._

_He jumped up from his seat and scrambled through the dark toward the nearest exit, fumbling with the latch and pushing hard. The door was out of alignment. He grunted and slammed his shoulder against it, tumbling out as it gave way on the second try and immediately rolling to a stand with his sword blazing in his hands. Before he could scan his surroundings, someone strong took his left arm and twisted it behind him, planting one leg between his own and lifting him a couple inches before throwing him to the smooth purple floor. Keith gasped for air as it was knocked out of his lungs, fumbling for his sword, when suddenly the knee on his back eased up and he could breathe again. He rolled over, pausing when he saw who it was._


	4. Fragments, Part Two

_"Keith?" Pidge Gunderson panted, their bayard flashing and shrinking back into its more compact form. Keith stared, mouth open, but then there was shouting and Pidge glanced to their right as they reactivated their bayard and stood. They'd grown much taller since the last time he'd seen them. They glanced back at him once before running up to join Hunk in combat. Keith turned, wide-eyed, to the entrance to the dock, which was obscured by the green lion. His mouth parted slightly. It'd never crossed his mind that he might come across his old teammates while fighting. He stood and turned away from the lion, hesitating, debating whether he was obligated to help Pidge and Hunk now or not. Where was Shiro? Where was Lance? Maybe they were outside, covering their teammates?_

_Pidge and Hunk finished off the Galra robots in the dock and moved on further down the hallway. He decided to run after them - they were all here with the same goal, weren't they? He turned around the corner and nearly collided with Pidge. They turned around, making eye contact with Keith again._

_"What are you doing here?" he hissed quietly as they waited, timing the sentries._

_Pidge's eyebrows drew together in caution. "I could ask you the same question," they whispered back, leaning out of the hallway and looking around before continuing onward as the footsteps faded away._

_Keith frowned. "Searching for Zarkon. What else would I be doing?"_

_Hunk frowned and ducked into another hallway that branched off, turning to Keith. "We're here for Pidge's family," he said quietly. "You can either help or try not to cause trouble for us like you did out there." There was no bite behind his words; they were earnest, but Keith felt slightly annoyed nonetheless._

_"We were both cloaked," he muttered as they moved down the main hallway again, tucking themselves into another branch nearly a hundred yards down. "There's no way it could have been avoided."_

_"I know," Pidge said dismissively. "Whatever. It doesn't matter." They looked up apprehensively. "Will you help?"_

_Keith hesitated. "Okay."_

_Hunk and Pidge both watched his face for another couple seconds. After the next sentry passed, they moved again. Hunk spoke into his helmet._

_"Princess Allura? We found Keith here. He says he'll help us." He paused, listening, then glanced once back at Keith's face. "I don't know."_

_It took them a while to find the prisoners. They were all busy working with quintessence and fuel, moving things around, repairing things, being bossed around by Galra, from what Keith could tell from above. "What's your plan?" he asked._

_"We're getting them all to the escape pods and shuttling them to the castle," Pidge said. They were scanning the crowds for familiar faces with a kind of desperation that Keith really just couldn't understand. He'd never been that close with anyone other than Shiro, and he was used to Shiro being much more ahead of him in terms of skill and independence. He couldn't empathize with Pidge's situation. It was one of the many small reasons he'd left._

_"Ready?" Hunk asked, hoisting his bayard. He focused, took aim, exhaled._

_"Ready," Pidge confirmed, and light exploded from the end of Hunk's bayard, crashing through the glass with an earsplitting shatter and dividing into hundreds of smaller beams. They diverged, blasting through every Galra in sight, and Keith blew out a breath. Hunk had gotten much more impressive in the months Keith had spent away._

_Then Pidge did something that blew his mind._

_They touched their thumb and two fingers to the floor beneath them and closed their eyes, rich green vines and roots bursting through the metal and forming a bridge between the two levels, spilling through the window and reaching down toward the prisoners. Keith's air left his lungs, following numbly as Hunk and Pidge raced down the vines, nothing on their faces betraying that this was in any way out of the ordinary._

_"We're here to help," Hunk announced as they landed on the ground. "Follow us. Keith? Do you mind bringing up the rear?" Judging from his tone, Keith didn't really get the sense that he was actually asking._

_"Since when can you do that?" Keith questioned Pidge urgently, bewildered._

_Keith stared up at the roots, eyes wide with shock. He ran one hand up and down their surface as he waited for everyone to file out after his former teammates. The material was cool and organic, one hundred percent real._

_Pidge could somehow use the same powers their lion could._

* * *

_"Are you... going somewhere?" Keith flinched at the sound of the sleepy voice and turned around guiltily to meet Lance's jewel blue eyes._

_"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he mumbled. Of all the people on the ship, if anyone were to find him while he was preparing to leave, Keith would have preferred anyone but Lance. It would have been best if Keith had already been long gone by the time Lance ever found out about his decision._

_"Shouldn't you?" Lance crossed his arms, his face displaying his confusion like an open book. "I went looking for you but you were sneaking around the castle creepily. What are you doing?"_

_Keith exhaled and turned back around, adjusting his bag. "I'm leaving."_

_"What do you mean you're leaving? Where are you going?"_

_"To fight Zarkon."_

_"What? Are you crazy? Also, what do you think we've been doing out here this whole time?" There was an edge of panic in Lance's voice. This was exactly what Keith hadn't wanted to go through. Lance would try to stop him, and in the process, he would be the one to get hurt._

_"Lance," Keith said quietly. Then he turned back to face him, stepping toward where Lance stood in his silly altean robe. "Listen. Being part of Voltron is not working out for me right now. I can't sit around while you guys train and prepare." He tried to look away as the hurt started to wrap its spiderweb threads around Lance's expression, but he couldn't. "I've talked to Allura about it. It won't be a problem finding another red paladin who will probably fit your team better. I don't fit in. You and I are both better off away from each other."_

_Lance raised an eyebrow. "Wow. Okay. I'm dreaming, I get it. Why would Allura tell you it's fine to leave?"_

_Keith twisted his mouth in a grimace. "That's not exactly what she said. She just said that there are a lot of people in the universe qualified to be a paladin, and while some lions are more accepting than others, if one of us doesn't make it through to the end, the lions will have to accept a new paladin."_

_"And that's your signal to abandon us?" Lance's eyes were wide. He grabbed Keith's shoulders. "I know you're not used to it, but could you maybe try to think? You're the one who blew up at Pidge for wanting to leave Voltron and find their family."_

_"That was different!" Keith argued. "I'm not going on a quest to find my long lost bloodline! And it was before I knew that finding new paladins is not as big of a problem as I thought it was. I only stayed as long as I did because I thought I didn't have a choice. And I'm not_ abandoning _you, I'm still fighting Zarkon. I just work better alone." He shrugged off Lance's hands. Were the words coming from his mouth completely true?_ Not exactly, _he thought guiltily. He didn't have time to sit and hash out every small reason that was building up on him, though. All he needed right now was to make Lance leave, make him let Keith go._

 _"Keith," Lance said, his voice strained. "I can't believe what you're saying is real. What are you even talking about? The lions aren't the only factor. Finding a new red paladin_ is _a big problem! For us!" He hesitated. "For me!"_

_"Don't bring that into this," Keith begged, closing his eyes._

_"What do you mean? It_ is _a problem for me. I don't want you to leave," Lance continued, and Keith sighed; there was no way out of this. He was going to have to grit his teeth and say it._

_"It's also better if you forget about whatever's between us, Lance," Keith muttered, dropping the heavy words into the air like they weighed nothing to him. He opened his eyes, but didn't raise them any higher than Lance's collarbone._

_"Keith-" Lance stepped closer, bringing his hands up to the sides of Keith's face, and Keith turned his head away as he moved back. Lance stopped short, his arms falling back to his sides like dead weight. Keith risked a glance up to Lance's face, and the sheer confusion and pain there sent his heart plummeting off a cliff. He tore his eyes away and turned back to the pod, stepping up into the pilot's seat._

_"Goodbye, Lance," he muttered, his voice strangely steady. He heard no reply._

_He started the engine and, without looking back, shot out into space before the Castle could get too far from the trading moon they'd visited the morning before._

* * *

_Keith didn't really understand what had put him here, billions of light years from Earth, the pilot of one fifth of the most powerful weapon in the universe, aboard an ancient flying castle built from highly advanced technology, wrapped securely in the heat radiating from Lance's body. If he'd been told that this was where he'd end up when he had been younger, who knew, he might not have made all the decisions he'd made that had led up to this point. He wasn't sleeping. He was eating just the bare minimum. He missed Earth despite having nothing in specific to go back to. Not like Lance, who had his extensive family to miss, who had childhood memories of beaches and warmth. Not like Pidge, who wanted a chance to play videogames with their brother and learn more hacking. But he missed it anyway. He'd always dreamed of being an ace pilot, exploring the universe, being_ away _from Earth, but... He'd never wanted war._

 _Lance shifted against him, and, yeah, there was also this. There was Lance, and him, and_ them, _as a pair. He didn't really understand that either. They still bickered, Lance still pissed him off, but then they would get some time alone and their lips would be locked and there would be no room to breathe, much less argue. He was warm and he felt like Earth more than anyone else on the ship did, and Keith still wasn't completely sure if he wanted the same thing as Lance, but he definitely wasn't going to complain. And maybe that was unfair. Maybe he was leading Lance on by allowing this to continue. Maybe he should never have let it begin in the first place. He couldn't deny that he'd felt_ something _, but right when he'd gotten what he'd wanted, he'd thought,_ too soon. _He should have waited longer, made sure he really was willing to commit to whatever he'd committed himself to now. He was lost as to how to let Lance off gently, how to tell him that the feelings he'd had once were wearing down slowly._

_It wasn't really like he wanted to stop. He definitely still liked Lance, in a roundabout, infuriating way. But it was growing stale. Stagnation was eating away at him. He didn't feel like they were going anywhere. And despite all of that, he couldn't make himself say it to Lance, because every time he thought about doing so he just felt... sad._

_Then there was the conversation with Allura from earlier that day dancing and twirling around his every thought. The battle had been particularly cruel to Hunk, and he was currently in a healing pod recovering from heavy wounds. There'd been moments when they'd feared he may not make it through the trip back to the castle and to a pod. It'd brought up the question that Keith had been carefully treading around for weeks by now; what happened when one of them, for whatever reason, was no longer able to pilot a lion?_

_Keith had been working off his emotions the way he usually did: by training, and afterwards he'd decided he'd try and find Lance, who would have been too worried about Hunk to get any decent rest. He'd checked the control room before anything, because Lance's favorite pastime was traveling through the holographic star maps, zooming through the cosmos until he found Earth and could stare at the familiar shapes of its continents. Keith had a feeling he did it for several reasons. Lance was checking to make sure Earth hadn't sent up a distress beacon, although Keith wasn't sure that was something they'd see from a planet that had no idea of the existence of aliens yet. He was memorizing the route to Earth every single day, every time they moved, every wormhole jump they made, sometimes even if they stayed in the same place. He was making sure he didn't ever forget what it looked like, what the shape of every land mass was._

_Keith knew all that, but despite it all, the only words of comfort he could ever think to offer were "I'm sorry." They were already on the tip of his tongue, but he but them down when he found Allura instead; she was sitting in the middle of the darkened room, holographic stars still as she stared straight ahead at one specific planet. Keith approached quietly, watching to make sure she didn't show any signs of wanting him to leave. He lowered himself to the ground next to her, crossing his legs under him as he gazed at her face for a while before following her eyes to the planet she was watching. It was beautiful, rings circling it in overlapping planes. It was in much more detail than Earth, and she had zoomed in enough that he could see the massive architectural wonders that rose from the surface. There was a symbol sticking up from the planet, a label which Keith knew. It was the distress beacon._

_Allura sniffled and brought one sleeve up to her eye as Keith traced the unfamiliar Altean coastlines. He wondered what it must have been like. Galra ships attacking all sides of an entire planet at once, sapping quintessence, killing..._ Someone had to have shown up, _he thought. There must have been some kind of war when the Galra had attacked such a highly advanced race. There would have been allies too, nameless warriors, all of whom were 10,000 years dead by now but whom Keith respected anyway. There had been a resistance, and the most tragic part was that for all they knew, team Voltron and their dubious allies were all that was left of it._

_Not for the first time, their goal felt unachievable. The universe was fragmented._

_"Keith," Allura said quietly, her voice wavering. Keith looked at her. "Do you miss Earth?"_

_"Yeah," he said honestly._

_"How?" she asked helplessly. "How do you fight so endlessly when your heart belongs to a planet far away? How can you stay on the same path without ever doubting what you want to do?"_

_Keith didn't really know how to answer that. She was wrong; he was constantly plagued with doubt, he just found it easier to pour his energy into fighting Zarkon. "I guess it's easier when you know your planet still has a chance," he shrugged._

_Allura dropped her arm and gazed up at Altea's rotating surface. "When Hunk almost gave himself up for a fight that was never his to begin with today, it made me realize how much I've asked of you. You are young pilots, inexperienced in battle, and you've been put on the front lines of a war." Keith considered telling her about the history of war on Earth and how this wasn't much different from the military draft, but somehow he felt like that wouldn't improve the situation. "If one of you doesn't make it, Keith, I will never forgive myself," Allura continued. "I'll never forget that you gave your lives on Earth up to fight a war you weren't even a part of."_

_"What happens?" he asked. "If one of us doesn't make it, what happens to Voltron?"_

_Allura shrugged, shaking her head and speaking like the words she was saying were mundane things falling from her mouth. She didn't understand how closely Keith was listening to them. "The lions will pick another paladin." She drew in a shaky breath, her eyes less moist than earlier. "The blue lion would likely have the easiest transition. It is the most accepting of new paladins. As your lion is the most temperamental, it would be the hardest to find someone to be the new red paladin." She sighed. "You would have to learn to form Voltron at a whim with each other all over again. It would be... very sad, but the situation would not be a lost cause."_

_Keith felt like a mountainous weight had been lifted from every inch of his body. He'd been turning the idea over and over in his mind of leaving Voltron, but he'd been telling himself all along that he had no such option. Now he felt liberated. He could leave, he could walk away. He could take the fight straight to Zarkon the way no one on board seemed willing to do, he could flee to Earth and live out the rest of his life in comfort, he could do anything. The knowledge that he had no obligation to Voltron was the most comforting thing he'd heard all day._

_Now, as he mulled it over, he rolled over to look at Lance. His hair was spilling messily in all directions, starting to edge on the long side. He'd fallen asleep without going through his usual skin care routine, which he usually always did automatically, as if it were second nature. His soft lips were open slightly, pearly white teeth reflecting the gentle turquoise light that glowed from around the room. His chest was rising and falling smoothly but his eyelids were shifting erratically; Lance was lost in dreams. His scent enveloped the very air around Keith._

_Keith leaned his head forward and planted a light kiss on Lance's lips, pulling back and then evaluating his own actions. Why did he keep doing that? Why did he keep going in for kisses, hugs, touches? As time went on, it was starting to feel like it was more out of obligation than emotion. He wanted to, but it was also getting monotonous. He closed his eyes and buried closer into the warmth of Lance's shoulder. If he decided to leave... he'd have to do it in a way Lance wouldn't find out. He'd have to let Lance think everything was going fine, and Lance would have to find out from others of Keith's decision. He blew out a breath, inhaling again against Lance's skin. Leaving was... something he_ wanted _to do. And if he made the decision to go through with it, there was no way he'd ever be able to look at Lance when he broke the news._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also i got too lazy to read through those last two chapters so sorry for typos and stuff..


	5. Connections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, guess what I found in my drafts ~~

Dinner was a silent affair. Keith didn't know if he should call it that; the light was still bright outside from the white ball of fire that was this planet's sun. Apparently, while they'd slept, Allura had somehow deduced that they weren't in any danger from Haggar for now, and that they had ample time to eat and rest up and review what they all knew. Which Keith wasn't sure he had all the pieces to. His memory was incomplete and muddled, mixed with events from two different lives, and it was difficult to keep his head straight with the double information. He finished quickly and decided to take a walk - he felt like in another life he would have gone to the training deck, but he needed to be _away_ from the castle.

Red wasn't outside. He wasn't sure whether she'd flown back to the hangar or not, but he wasn't tempted to try to find out and instead forced himself to think about anything else. He wasn't ready for that telepathy thing yet. He needed time, space, and, most importantly, solitude to process his thoughts. He trudged through the trees in the direction of the beach, butterflies fluttering close to him and brushing against him lightly. They were so curious, it fascinated him. Butterfly species on Earth were close to extinction and definitely nowhere near as brave. He couldn't even recall if he'd ever seen one out in the world, naturally.

He focused on just his breathing until he reached cliffs, beyond which the garnet red ocean glittered in the softly waning light as it rolled against white sands. He sat down near the edge, his legs dangling over an outcropping, before allowing himself to finally think about all that had happened.

His first instinct was still just his normal life: his dad left him, he was taken in by the Eron family, he'd grown up with a mother and father and Reine as his sister. He was in his senior year of high school with plans to double major in aeronautics and astrophysics. Shiro was just a figure in the news, someone who never came back from the Kerberos mission. Chase Holt's family had moved after that event, pursuing careers as engineers. Neither claimed to have any memory of what had happened to their crew member, and despite the fact that Chase was his friend, he'd never tried to pursue an answer. He'd fantasized about a life like that though; it'd been the one thing he and Cris could connect over no matter the circumstances. They'd both planned to apply to flight school.

And then his alternate set of memories told him something else, despite being full of infuriating holes that garnered nothing but confusion. His dad had left, but he'd immediately enlisted in the Galaxy Garrison as one of their youngest members. Shiro there had been nothing short of the closest thing Keith had to family - he looked out for him over the years, made sure he was doing well, helped him get homework done and study for exams, supported him. Keith would never have gone so far as to call him a father figure; the man was gone often enough to prevent any intimate feelings like that from developing. But he'd been so much more than a news story. Then he'd eventually been booted from the Garrison after Shiro went missing, because he couldn't ever stand to hold his tongue when it came to anything that ticked him off. Which was a fair number of things.

He'd found Shiro again after he'd crashed in the desert. Lance had awakened the blue lion and they'd all been wormholed into a war. Keith found out he was part Galra, and it had - literally - alienated him from everyone else. The little things that set him apart from his team built up for months. Their efforts to defeat Zarkon going to waste time and time again had only added to the weight, and Keith had finally bitten the bullet and left to pursue his enemy at a faster pace that suited him better. It was some welcome solitude for a good several months, and then he'd found himself right back in those glowing turquoise halls.

And everything had gone wrong in his absence. First, he'd missed the memo that there was always a way to get closer to the lions: Hunk and Pidge had reached such an interdependence with theirs that they and their lions could use each others' abilities without needing to physically be together at all. Second, Lance had been taken captive by the Galra.

After that his recollection was more missing than not. He knew Haggar had escaped the day they'd defeated Zarkon. Shiro and Pidge had set out during the battle to face her specifically, but something had happened and Pidge had had to fight her alone. Whatever the details had been, Keith knew that they hadn't come back as the same person after all had been said and done. He suspected that was the biggest reason Pidge had fought to erase all their memories. He, on the other hand, had wanted the complete opposite - he'd wanted to end it, just _end_ it already. He'd been done. He'd wanted to claim the title of winner and he'd been sick of finding more and more obstacles in his way.

Logic told him this was either a dream or one long acid trip. Maybe he was comatose in reality. What kind of person got snatched out of an ordinary life and told that he was part of a universal war against evil purple aliens, and then just... believed it? He scoffed out loud at the thought. Him, apparently. He didn't know what to believe. Both stories were plausible, too plausible, as if both had already happened, and it was too much for him to wrap his mind around. 

Casual, even footsteps gradually drew near him. He cracked his eyes open a little, glimpsing a streak of white hair out of his periphery. "Shiro?" He glanced over, only to find princess Allura with a kind smile on her face as she bent to sit next to Keith.

"How are you?" she asked gently, and Keith had absolutely no idea how to answer the question.

"Fine, I guess."

She turned her head away from him and looked out to the ocean. The waves crashed below, more violent than any Keith had ever seen before. There were six moons he could count in the sky, all clustered near each other, which explained it, he supposed. "The atmosphere here is very interesting," she said after a few minutes of silence. "This star emits only four colors. Two of them are invisible to humans. To you, the land must look very binary. Red and cyan."

"The water's red," Keith noted, nodding his head in agreement.

Allura smiled. "Yes. It's a result of the sea life on this planet. I don't think any of you could swim in it safely. Lance seemed rather perturbed by it."

Oh, Lance. Lance. Lance. The name captured his personality so well; it was one that rolled off the tongue so fast that you wanted to repeat it. It was satisfactory, it was quick, it had its own unique incomparable beauty in sound. A start of laziness and a burst of clarity; that was what it was like to hear it, to shape it on your tongue, to let it burst from your mouth and carry your voice into the wind like a free bird. Keith loved the sound of it, loved the images it colored in his head. Blue. White. Gold. Cris wasn't as light, as weightless as Lance. The power in a name.

Allura sensed the turn in his mood and fell quiet again, watching the glittering orb of light sink closer to the horizon. It was moving at a pace that felt ten times slower than Earth's sun.

"I suggest you commune with the red lion, Keith," she said kindly after a few minutes of silence.

He shook his head. "I'd really rather not right now."

"She missed you," Allura went on. "Although I don't think I have to tell you that. How did it feel, piloting your lion without your memories back?"

"Strange," he admitted. "I should have felt more freaked out by it all."

"Did she talk to you?"

"Yeah. She was happy. Kind of impatient." Keith recalled the pull he'd felt toward her, inexplicable and magnetic. Something pushed at his mind, a presence, and his apprehension spiked up and up until it was gone again.

"She's just waiting for you to come," Allura said.

Keith frowned and picked up a rock, rolling it around and around in his gloved palm. "I'll go eventually. I'm just trying to figure myself out first."

"Of course," she said. "That's understandable. Take your time. It must be hard on you, I'm sure both sets of memories feel equally accurate."

"How did you do it, though?" Keith questioned, genuinely curious. "How did you decide what kind of life we would lead? How did you put memories of us in the minds of other people on Earth? How did you take entire families and change their lives?" His mind went to Reine Eron and his mother and father. In his newly gained memories, Keith hadn't ever known family after his dad had left him, but the people had obviously existed. If he'd been sent back to Earth a year ago, how had they been convinced he'd grown up with them?

Allura got a certain light in her eyes, like awe, but as if she knew it wasn't appropriate. "It was a fascinating process. You humans are imaginative creatures. Perhaps if you were as old as Altea had been, your society would have progressed just as far as ours. Your brains love to fill in information, it's one of your flaws, actually. Rather than to script out an entire life, we had to just fabricate a single event and your minds went about filling in the holes with the most plausible scenarios. If we connected two people and planted the same event, their minds worked together to fit it into their lives. It was surprisingly easy." Easy. Easy, she said, and it made Keith feel sick, or at least uncomfortable. "With Lance's family, for example, we just removed all information that told them he applied to the Garrison. We told them they moved to a different city, that they enrolled in a certain school, and after a moment their brains just built around it. I think your fluidity as a race is beautiful. It's a vulnerability, yes, but it really is special."

Keith let that sit between them, thick and silent like butter, like the sheet of lint that comes out of a washing machine. Lance's entire giant family had had their lives changed. He considered asking why, but he didn't want to relive the previous arguments. His mind started dwelling on Lance again. He was carefully avoiding thinking about... that. The kiss. The sleeping together. The casualness of everything. He didn't realize he was showing any outward reaction to his thoughts until Allura pointed out, "your skin is flushing."

"Guess I'm just tired," he mumbled, his automatic excuse for anything. It didn't really fit here, and Allura was too smart not to get that.

"You're thinking about something. Are you confused about Lance?" Okay. Why did she know anything about that. "You remember your relationship, I'm assuming? How much?"

"It's just a bunch of stupid dreams," he muttered.

"They're memories, Keith." Allura's voice was soft, hanging in the air; Keith slammed his hand into it, slapping it to the ground in his burst of emotion. Emotion. What emotion? He couldn't figure it out. Anger, fear... love? Surely not. The rock dug into his hand underneath his palm.

"They're not memories!" He growled. "My memories are-are-are of - about me, I remember staying up all night writing research papers, I remember marathoning video games series with Chase, a-a-and Cris, I remember an incompetent boy who goofs around too much, who watches too much Netflix? I don't remember all of this. And I certainly don't remember Lance and me in any kind of _relationship._ The only love I know is for my family." His heart jumped dangerously as he heard his own voice. He felt like falling just a few steps further, down, plummeting off the cliff. Falling into the sky. Falling into the horizon.

Allura curled her fingers around Keith's, slowly prying them out of the tense fist he'd made around the rock and letting them fold into hers. Her hands were tiny. "I didn't know it would be like this," she tried. "I would have done things differently back then if I had. It's more difficult for you than I believed it would be."

Keith raised his free hand and burrowed his fingers up through his hairline, hiding his expression behind his palm and forearm.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Well. Shiro's always been good at putting on a confident front. I'm not like him, Allura. This memory thing - I can't deal with it the way he did."

"I know," she agreed, smiling wryly. "Pidge would come closest in terms of mental strength. That's why Shiro trusted their decisions. But they may have an even harder time with this."

Keith's thoughts returned to his friend. Pidge had been especially obscure about _what exactly_ had happened with Haggar that made them so adamant to leave everything behind and run the other way. "What happened to them?" He mumbled, rubbing his left hand fingers over his temples.

"They haven't told me anything they haven't told the rest of you," she says. "But being Altean, I can imagine many ways Haggar may have tried to kill them. As a race, Alteans have always been able to take more mental stress than most others. Inflicting any kind of mental duress on another individual is never a mild disturbance. Alteans who could channel magic would often use psychic abilities as a tactic of interrogation or as a form of torture, primarily in times of war." Allura seemed so casual saying it.

Keith paused the massaging circles he'd been pressing to his head. Did he want to know more? His impulsive mouth decided for him. "I still don't _get_ it. What did she _do?_ "

Allura frowned. Their hands were still entwined with each other, comforting. A soft breeze had picked up, pulling lightly on the ends of her hair. "How do I explain it? Consider your brain and your mind. They're two completely separate concepts, the way a house is to a home. The brain is a limit, just a physical space your mind inhabits. A conduit for your mind to connect to your body through. The mind extends beyond its physical confinements, too, and if you learn to control that part of your mind, you can use magic." She leaned backwards on both hands, dropping Keith's hand at last. "The farther out you can control, the more advanced you become with magic. Haggar is very, very advanced. My guess is that she would have reached out with her mind and worked at destroying the edges of Pidge's mind. Parts of it Pidge can't access yet, but that are still connected to them. She would have bent it, fractured it, torn through it, twisted it. What that means is Pidge could have experienced pain, confusion, loss of memory, loss of basic motor functions, mental instability, any range of mental disorders, irrational phobia, paranoia-"

Allura didn't show any signs of stopping, so Keith held up both hands. "I think I get it."

Allura glanced at him. "It's more extreme than those English words give it credit for, Keith. It was a war tactic. Illegal and punished severely if practiced for any other purpose back on Altea." Keith held her eye contact, dropping his elbows down to his knees as he leaned forward against them.

"I know," he said, although he didn't know, but he thought he understood it to some degree. "How many of those things do you think Pidge had to deal with?"

"Honestly, Keith..." Allura picked up a fallen branch, square leaves fluttering in the gently increasing wind. "I think it would have been all of them."

Something in Keith fell as the words reached his ears. He didn't know what it was, but the confirmation of his fears felt like all his positive emotions had just fallen out the bottom of his feet and were now drifting farther and farther down the cliff face, swirling in the wind. He just...

"You've been here for a long time," Allura said, observing him closely. "Are you ready to head back inside?" He shook his head vigorously. She smiled softly. "Who are you avoiding? Pidge? Lance?"

Keith flushed again. "Why do you keep coming back to Lance through all this?"

"Because he's on your mind, and I know you well enough to see that," she said kindly. Keith raised an eyebrow. She wasn't wrong. "I did also come back to Pidge. You chose to focus on Lance." Oh.

He hunched his head down so his hair covered more as it blew into his face. "I'm not avoiding Lance."

Allura laughed, bells in the wind. "Maybe you don't remember, but you and I became very close, particularly around the time we were looking for Lance. I think after he was found, you withdrew from everyone, including me, but I still know you. It's okay to love someone, Keith."

And then everything was squeezing: his chest, his legs, his eyes, his fists, his teeth, his _heart_...

Allura watched him for a few more minutes as he moved specks of dirt around on the rough white stone. The wind kept sweeping them away - it was definitely stronger than it had been when he'd stepped out of the castle. He turned to look behind him, the bright turquoise leaves fluttering wildly on their trees. The branches were swaying. He noticed after a moment how quickly the branches bended and snapped back, as if used to this. They were more whip-like than stiff.

"Keith," Allura said again. He looked at her. "How connected are you to the red lion right now? I understand you just woke up, but I must know whether you'll be able to form Voltron when needed."

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"Can you talk to her?" Keith debated that in his mind.

"I could, yeah," he mumbled, repeating it as he realized the wind was starting to magnify the sound of the crashing waves below.

"Can you move her from here?" She questioned. Her hair was flying everywhere, out of control, like tendrils with their own minds. "What about using her connection to fire?"

Keith figured if he really asked, the lion would come for him, so he didn't bother responding. He held up his fingers instead, thinking about the memory that had resurfaced: vines bursting from Pidge's fingers, twisting and growing. Could he do that too? He could. He knew he could. But how?

Allura watched for a while longer, holding her hair away from her eyes. Nothing happened. She glanced around them when Keith dropped his hand, reaching down to take his other one and turning toward the castle as she stood with him.

"We need to head back inside," she announced, squinting. "I don't like how fast this wind is increasing. This planet is prone to hurricanes."

Keith's eyes widened, his heart picking up the pace. Hurricanes were not something he'd ever had to deal with, growing up in California, or out in the desert around the Garrison, whichever way. She dropped his arm and forged ahead, back into the trees, leading the way to the castle.

* * *

_More. This concept of more. I figure that's the best way to describe what it feels like with Keith; this idea of having more, giving more, wanting more. It's so not what I expected, I mean. Crushing is one thing, right? Crushing hurts and stuff, but it's easy. You fall for someone and then you just hopelessly pine for them and moan about it to Hunk, who then continues to be a saint about the whole thing. But like ever since Keith and I got into this thing it became totally different, the standard is higher so the usual level of "wow I want to kiss his stupid face" is more like "i am now kissing his stupid face" and there isn't really any endless hoping left. Until, I guess, when I can do it again._

It's kind of great. It's comfortable. It's fun. It makes space feel less empty.

 

Space feels emptier now. I don't know what it is. But Keith's distant. I don't mean to say he's distant from me, specifically, although that isn't wrong; I know he's still just as open with me as usual. He's just. He definitely has a lot on his mind. It worries me a little.

 

Space is freaking empty as quiznak.  
To clarify, he left.

Keith shoved the book under his pillow when someone knocked. The doors hissed open as he turned his attention to whoever was behind them, eyes landing on Lance with his one elbow leaning against the edge of the frame and the inside leg bent. "Hey," Keith said, off guard.

"Can I come in?" Lance asked, strolling in anyway. "We should talk."

"Sure." Keith's stomach fluttered nervously. Lance dropped onto the bed next to him, flopping back immediately so he was lying with his legs dangling off the edge.

"How much stock are you putting into this memory crap?" he mumbled. "Do you really think we went to the Galaxy Garrison?"

"Must have," Keith frowned.

"There's no way. Only the geniuses get in. The real talented pilots, the super athletic kids. It was my dream to get there one day as, like, a 30 year old man." Lance stared up at the ceiling and frowned. "Guess you must have had no trouble with any of that, though."

There was something hostile in his expression, so Keith stayed silent.

"I mean, if I hated you either way, I guess this'll come as kind of a surprise, but I really don't hate you that much right now," Lance continued.

"That much?"

"Well." Lance huffed out a clipped laugh. "I still remember that you left Voltron. But I don't know, that memory is still pretty vague, and I guess with the sudden influx of wishy-washy information I'm kind of null on the whole subject now. Earlier today or yesterday or something I kind of felt like me and you had had some big disagreement or falling out, which is totally believable, considering it's you." Keith rolled his eyes. "But nah, I'm chill."

"Alright," Keith said. "Good to know, I guess." Was Lance going to bring up their former relationship? The way he was acting was rather out of place considering the things Keith remembered. He decided to push the boundaries. "What was it like when you were with the Galra?"

Lance looked over at him and frowned. "With the Galra? Dunno what you're talking about."

Keith's breath caught in his throat. "What _do_ you remember?"

Lance sat up again. "Just growing up, studying like there was no tomorrow, getting into the Garrison, Iverson - that _terrible_ dude - and you guys. God, I hated Iverson. The only person I think he ever liked was you, and even then, he was the one who had you kicked out."

Keith blinked and glanced away, focusing on the turquoise light from the walls. "I don't remember any of that," he muttered. "What else do you know?"

Lance shrugged. "Just facts. Bits and pieces. You left Voltron. We beat Zarkon. Haggar escaped. That very last conversation all of us had together." Then he turned to Keith and grinned, his eyes lighting up. Keith's chest ached. "Oh, and my ultra-cool space girlfriend. That's what I was really supposed to come here to tell you. We're heading to this mermaid planet next. Plaxum lives there!"

His heart thudded to a stop as Lance stood and strolled out with a "see ya!" He'd heard the name before. _My ultra-cool space girlfriend._ Here Keith had been worrying about his flirting with Allura, and it turned out Lance already had his own partner and she was down on some fishy planet being a mermaid. Keith pictured the shine in Lance's eyes again as he'd mentioned the mermaids. Mermaids! As if Keith could ever compete with that. As if he could even think of competing with that. Lance was gone.

He slid his fingers back under the pillow and curled them around the spine of the book. The handwriting in it changed from messy and quick at the beginning to smooth, even cursive at the end that flowed like rain. It was Lance's. He felt like he was invading privacy, but apparently if Lance didn't remember, it was fine, wasn't it? And he'd found it in his closet, anyway.

He opened it back to the first page again.

_Lance McClain._

_I'd date this but that's like impossible. I found this in one of the castle's rooms, and I figured no one was using it. I'm not much of the dear diary type, but I'm really kind of limited in my options at this point. I swear, if I don't start writing down every detail about what I remember from earth, I'm going to forget it all and that's..... that's ridiculous, I can't ever allow that to happen. I can't forget. I couldn't. So here I am!!! First off, it's blue. It's so blue, it's bluer than anything we've seen yet. I'm starting to think Earth is unique for being one of the bluest planets out there, and I love that. Just yesterday we were at this planet that had seas of orange sludge. It was clear as all get-out, too? We could see through it thousands of feet to the bottom of the ocean floor, but once we touched it it was like wet sand. That was orange. Neon orange. But clear. I hate aliens._

_That's a lie. Aliens are I swear the coolest. Some of them are pretty, some of them are smart, some of them are adorable, some of them are just vicious but it's still all so cool. Everyone's so different in all these unimaginable ways._

_I guess the big thing I'm worried about is relativity. Allura assures me that between all the time we're spending on planets vs in space, we're aging only a little slower than people on earth, but I'm still concerned. What if I come back home and Lina is 27 years old? What if I come back home and Lewis is 97?_

_You know, if this ends up being the only record people have left of me, like I dunno if I die out in space or something and they need to send something back to my family, or like put in a museum for the world to gaze at in awe, I'd like to point out my parents' weird obsession with the letter L?? Lance, Lina, Lewis, Linus, Leon, Lara, Loretta, even our dog is named Lady. I mean, I'm so jealous of Mina just because she gets to have an M embroidered on her towel and not be confused. I had to get "LAN", which is so stupid, I just went and had my whole name stitched on. But I guess Mina does have to deal with people mixing her up with Lina so, I guess that's fine. If I had a twin we'd both be awesome as quiznak, but I'd also have some actual competition when it came to the ladies?? Can't afford someone else running around with my devilishly handsome face._

_The other thing about Earth is that it's where my family is, I guess. Beaches! My mom's cooking!! Stuff that like no one understands because allura probably had servants, Keith cooked his own food and Shiro probably did too, Pidge had to get super independent too after their dad and brother disappeared and Hunk is literally Gordon Ramsay. No one knows. No one remembers the glory of a home-cooked meal. Nothing compares, man, not even space coffee. I still appreciate you, Hunk._

Keith skipped somewhere to the middle. 

_We started using that one room in the castle that used to have Alfor in it. Shiro spends a lot of time there. Me? Haha, I let myself touch the sand and the waves one time and then I decided it wasn't fair. I haven't been to that hallway in days. I'm probably never going back. I don't know, I can't explain it - it should feel comforting, the way I guess it does for Shiro. But it just makes the aching worse. Hunk gets it. He's the only one who seems willing to listen, honestly. I don't know where I'd be without him. Probably dead or something._

_This is so depressing. I need my vitamin D! Sunshine, thy rays are missed dearly._

Keith skipped a few days forward again, watching the bottoms of Lance's f's dip lower, curl more, watching as his lowercase began to line up more and more.

_I went back to the AI room. We're in transit currently, en route to some ancient Altean ally who apparently is still up and fighting. Their distress beacon was deactivated some hundred years ago and we're checking it out, but Allura had to wormhole us away a bunch in the last few days so Coran is prohibiting her from using the teludav. I ran into Shiro, though, and the room switched to display the Garrison when I walked in. It gave me so much déjà vu - I had so many mixed feelings there. I loved it because it was freaking awesome. Orange isn't a bad color even if the uniforms needed some serious design upgrades. Iverson sucked butt. The simulator was really fun. I always wrecked it, but just for those few seconds I could imagine I was in space, on a mission, a crew loyal to boot and a lost pilot raising his eyes to see my gleaming rescue ship descending to provide assistance - I don't know, it really really did it for me. Ever since the first day I shadowed there as a middle schooler, I was hooked on space._

_That paragraph was getting long. Point is, I saw Shiro in the AI room and we talked for the entire day. Hunk went crazy looking for me but he was super chill about it when he heard about it. It was kind of the first time I felt like Shiro acknowledged my existence. Even with him it was always Keith this, Keith that, and like, I GET it, you're like family. But he was my idol at the Garrison and finally having him treat me like i was a person, maybe even an equal was just... it definitely brightened my spirits. I showed him Veradero. He showed me his own old house and parts of Japan, even though he said he'd never actually lived there._

_I mean, okay, the Asian thing. It can't have been just me. Takashi Shirogane, the legend. Keith Kogane, the most talented pilot of his generation. Such false lies. It's just - they're Asian, they're smart, they're cool, and us? We're Samoan, Cuban, White... I know, I know this is all centuries old. But it's still there, you know? You keep trying your hardest to get your marks up, to pass the exam, to be a successful leader, and some Asian kid shows up and does it all and more without even blinking. It makes you stop and think, it reminds you that you're just a boy from Cuba. Viva Cuba y viva mi alma estupida. Like it's not that I think Cubans are stupid it's just... Asians are smart. How am I supposed to compete against genetics?_

_And then like, you take this to Voltron - Shiro, the black lion, Keith, the right hand man, literally. The rest of us are like... white on top and the colored boys on the bottom. I know none of this is about race but you really can't help but feel it sometimes. And I feel it. I really, really feel it sometimes._

The entire journal was probably just like that. Lance had the tendency to ramble - the entries got longer and longer. He'd started to develop the habit of thinking by writing. His later entries -

_Space is freaking empty as quiznak._

_If I'm continuing with the space analogy here when it comes to... I don't even feel like writing his name, it feels like if I put it down by ink, it'll become permanent or something. He didn't even tell me. He tried to leave in the middle of the night without telling anyone. I don't... what a self-conceited egoistic - - it's like he doesn't think of anyone but himself. I remember when pidge tried to leave and he was all "oh no we can't form Voltron without you, family doesn't matter." Or I guess, I indirectly remember because Hunk told me about it, but point made. Now he leaves the Red Lion paladin-less and prances off in his own escape pod because he's a way-finding Disney princess off to make her own destiny._

_You know what he says is that he can't afford to wait for us to get on his level. I mean, not really, but that's the gist. And I get it? I'd forgotten that even if we've changed, he's still_ Keith _\- he's still the idiot boy who was always so much better than everyone else. But honestly. I'd really thought those days were over._

_Should I forget about him? Should I keep checking the comms to see if he's indicated that he's coming back? I can't help reaching back through every conversation we've had recently. I've noticed him drifting apart for weeks and weeks and weeks and I never did anything about it except complain to Hunk. I don't get it, I don't understand why he left. Did he think he was that easily replaceable? Did he think he didn't matter to us? ... did he think he didn't matter to me? Did I not matter to him?_

_I'm so alone now._

_It feels just like it did when I realized I might not be coming back to earth for a long, long time._

Keith flipped to the last entry.

_We're hiding out near this Galra base. We're going to be freeing the nearby planet tomorrow, but everyone is supposed to be sleeping right now. I can't. This battle is kind of a big one, and it's gonna be another one of those times when we really feel Keith's absence. I mean, whatever, to that, but like as a team, five is better than four._

_I'm kind of worried about this one. Blue is really apprehensive too. We've started trying to bond more on Allura's instruction, because apparently it'll make us stronger fighters, even though so far it hasn't really yielded any results. I'm supposed to be able to use her ice blast by myself. Instead, yesterday I managed to make it rain for half an hour in the training deck. I mean, it's something. But man, I want to be cool and control ice._

_Which is the other thing! My hands are always cold now. I mean, everything, my entire body, it's always cold now, but I don't really feel it. If anything I feel warmer because everything else in comparison is warmer than me. I don't know. It must be a blue paladin thing._

_Back to my point, though. Blue feels super anxious about today. So I guess I do too. I can't always tell if it's her emotions or my emotions, but something is going to go wrong..... I feel like. I mean, everything could go right! But at the same time I have this weird feeling that that's not going to happen._

That had been right before Lance had been taken by the Galra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing is still slow going. If you're reading this, i love you <3

**Author's Note:**

> next update was planned for May 31st, but i'm on hiatus, sorry loves <3 there's a really long klangst fic coming up sometime this fall, though, stay tuned for that.


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